Never heard of Dosh, but my guess based on your description is the harvesting of CC info. If they have access to your statements, they have info on your spending habits in general. Plenty of companies would pay good money for that data (anonymized or not).

Edit: Looking at their site a bit more, it looks like they keep the data for themselves and use it for marketing ads to users:

https://www.dosh.com/local

https://www.dosh.com/brands-and-retailers

Article about it here:

https://productmint.com/dosh-business-model-how-does-dosh-ma...

> Dosh makes money by taking a percentage on each transaction facilitated through its cashback network.

> It can command a portion of each transaction in exchange for directing new and repeat customers to the merchants it partners with.

> Dosh claims that its app leads to a 29 percent increase in purchasing frequency. Furthermore, conversion rates are lifted by 72 percent whenever consumers are shopping with Dosh.

Re: customer-middleman-merchant, it sounds like it could be win-win-win if the middleman can introduce a new customer to a merchant providing a useful good/service. Customer gets useful good/service at a slight discount - albeit a smaller discount perhaps than if dosh wasn't taking a cut - dosh gets a cut, merchant gets a new customer while paying for both the customer's discount & dosh's cut. Then perhaps win-win-lose or lose-win-lose if the customer turns into a regular and continues to purchase through the middleman. So i don't understand why customers & merchant would keep dealing through dosh for repeat business.

> I assumed previously that they were having the business owner pay them out, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

In the silliest case, they might just be doing the VC funded growth thing where they're subsidising the cost of your restaurant meal with VC money in order to grow the base of users who are in the habit of using the app, without the restaurant being involved.

Kickback from those specific restaurants?