The position of the floating-rate receiver (who is also the fixed-rate payer) on an interest rate swap. In a plain vanilla swap, the long side trades a series of fixed interest payments for a series of floating interest payments. The size of the payments is determined by the underlying interest rate times a notional principal amount. The net amount of the positive and negative cash flows is the amount that changes hands in each resetting period. Therefore, if the fixed rate exceeds the floating rate in a given period, the long side makes a payment to the short side.