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A security flaw in Microsoft’s much anticipated Bing search engine has been exposed by a US entrepreneur – this loophole could allow users to steal large sums of money when using the search engine’s “Cash-back” scheme without having to make any online purchases.

The cash-back scheme was introduced in order to tempt users to use Bing as a search engine rather that Google. According to Microsoft, the service was a "great way for you to save money when you shop online", earning customers "a percentage of the product price as cash-back" when shopping with affiliate sites.

The potentially fatal flaw was found by Samir Meghani, the co-founder of price comparison website Bountii. He discovered that an easily alterable piece of computer code could lead to vast sums of money being unlawfully credited to a users account. Speaking on his blog, Mr Meghani said: "I've never bought anything using Bing cash-back, but the balance of my account is $2,080.06.”

"I'm not going to explain exactly how to generate the fake requests so that they actually post, but it's not complicated."

Microsoft have responded by requesting that Mr Meghani remove the post in question from the blog, or face legal action.

Despite a multi-million dollar marketing campaign, Bing still only has a 9% share in search traffic. This "cash-back" fiasco is yet another embarrassing episode for the juvenile search-engine – and with Microsoft struggling to boost the search engine’s popularity in the UK this is sure to be another setback that the search engine could do without.