Cashback and money apps: real value or noise?

Cashback and rewards apps promise "free money", and sometimes that is true — but often the real value is smaller than the time and attention they demand. The key is to separate the few that give real, passive value from the many that simply turn you into the product.

The honest assessment is simple: does the app give you something back on spending you would have done anyway, without tempting you to spend more? Then it can have value. If instead it gets you to buy things you would not otherwise have bought in order to "earn" points, you lose money on net — and that is exactly the behaviour many of the apps are designed to trigger. Services like Freecash and financial marketplaces like Savvy exist in this landscape; judge them the same way as everything else — what is the real, not theoretical, value?

Two rules protect you. First: cashback on planned spending is fine; cashback that drives impulse buys is a trap. Second: watch your privacy — "free" apps often earn from your data, so read what you are giving away.

The safest "return" on spending is still to spend less, not to chase points — a krone saved is always worth more than an earned fraction of a point. That ties into a personal budget, into the discipline around travel rewards credit cards, and into building an emergency fund instead of optimising small amounts.

Use cashback only on planned spending, and guard your data. This is not financial advice.