Tired of Groupon-ing for discounts? How does free strike you? That’s the premise behind FreeMonee, which is hoping to do location-based discount services like Foursquare one better. Launched by veterans of eBay, Oracle, and Visa, FreeMonee gives credit and debit cardholders cash gifts at various stores and restaurants that are part of a “cash-gift network.”

But it’s not as random as it sounds. FreeMonee’s Adaptive Matching Technology crunches the numbers, analyzing the buying habits of hundreds of millions of cardholders to match prospective customers with businesses. Banks recruit customers to shop at retailers. In return for their patronage, customers receive cash gifts to spend however they like.

FreeMonee, flush with $11 million in start-up capital, has already signed on two yet-to-be-announced banks and is set to launch this summer. But as with anything, there’s a catch. Users will likely already be customers, but those “free” gifts are sure to increase spending on—you guessed it—credit cards. And while the bank recruitment angle is no different from the way they target customers for additional bank services, some people are likely to have concerns about privacy—despite the promise of such. Read more at Mashable ^[1].