Starbuck's coupons and debt

[Cropmeat]

I have a question regarding coupons so I'm wondering if somebody has any knowledge about the process of issuing and redeeming coupons. The coupons I'm talking about are the ones being pulled out of purses and wallets at grocery checkout, etc.

Typically, these have a "monetary" face value printed on them which is always of very small value (fractions of a cent). From my perspective, and someone please point out to me any flaws in my assumptions, these appear to be of the same form as FRNs. If the monetary value printed on them is considered legal tender, and if you have 20 coupons with a declared face value of $.0005 (1/20 of a cent), wouldn't a bank be required to exchange one copper penny for your 20 coupons?

If a bank refused to do the exhange with you, refusing legal tender, couldn't a complaint be formed against the entity responsible for the coupon's printing, or the bank? I guess what I'm ultimately seeing is that, for some reason, these entities are required/allowed to print the coupons as monetary (debt) instruments.

This looks to be no different than printing money like at a Federal Reserve mint. If a million coupons are printed valued at even $.0002 (1/50 of a cent), $200 has been created. Considering their values are probably typically closer to $.0005 and the amount of coupons printed probably number in the billions, this amounts to millions of dollars being printed.

Does this have any relation to the coupons suitors present to creditors in order to discharge debt? This would follow the same principle that says a promissory note (these coupons) can be printed on anything that's agreed to be accepted, no?

Has anybody researched any laws directing this trade/how it relates to suitors and their common-law capacity of trading promissory notes wherever they're accepted? And we again reach the conclusion that, since we've moved to the fiat dollar and can only discharge debt, we have no choice but to issue coupons/FRNs, no?

Thanks for any replies.