We’ve got some news to brush away that Bank Holiday sleepy dust. In a veritable David vs Goliath showdown, the plucky British company Quidco is taking on the heavyweights Facebook and Four Square with its new cash back app.

Never heard of Quidco? Let me explain. A must for any savvy shopper, Quidco is the UK’s largest cash back and voucher codes website. Free to join, users log in online and browse through the retailers and offers listed on Quidco. Clicking through from Quidco, users are taken to the retailer’s ecommerce site. Once they’ve purchased their desired products online Hurrah! users pocket the commission Quidco secures for directing them to the retailer’s website. The site is also a hub for printable restaurant and store vouchers as well as exclusive offline cash back deals. For example, if you register your debit or credit card on the Quidco site, you can bag yourself cash back in Debenhams department stores.

Today Quidco have seriously upped the ante and strengthened their offline offering. Their new iPhone app rewards users with cash and exclusive money-saving offers for simply checking into certain high street stores and restaurants. This pioneering check in cash tool is the first in the UK and is bound to make Facebook Deals and Four Square a little hot under the collar. By checking into an area, the app flags up the money-saving offers in the vicinity, such as vouchers, bar code vouchers and in store cash back deals. If you check into specific stores and restaurants, cash incentives and bigger deals are up for grabs. For instance users who check into any Gap store this weekend will get a 25p reward for doing so. Whilst it might not sound like much, there are very few of us who will scoff at payment for perusing the shops without necessarily spending a penny.

So how does this work in practice? Users can secure their discounts by showing the voucher code or the bar code on their iPhone screen at the checkout. To bag your cash back, you’ll need to register your credit or debit card either on the app or on the Quidco website (just make sure you use that card in the store!) Cash is paid into the user’s Quidco account and can be withdrawn twice a month. Want to share your frugal finds? The app naturally makes tweeting or posting your bargains on Facebook nice and easy.

For the cynics amongst us, this app is a way of getting the consumer to do the leg work in promoting retailers and offers. Valid point. Checking into stores and disseminating deals and bargains amongst personal online networks makes the Quidco user an expedient marketer for the companies in question. Other cynics might argue that this app favours the mighty chain store. With less bargaining power, smaller profit margins and minimal marketing spend, boutique and independent stores might struggle to foot the Quidco commission. As such they’ll fail to feature on Quidco vicinity deal searches and the promise of a financial incentive may well coax a customer to the multi-national next door. Cynicism aside, with the cost of living creeping steadily upwards, there’s a lot to be said for an app that aggregates local money-saving bargains, albeit from the high street heavy-weights, and pays you for a customary trip to town.

Available for the iPhone, we’re anxiously awaiting an Android, WP7 and Blackberry-friendly version. Head over to iTunes to download the app for free.

Do you have the Quidco app? Do you think it’s any good? Let us know!

Miss Moneypenniless x