Launched late April at Melbourne's Mentone Primary School and in partnership with the Commonwealth Bank, the mobile payment app allows parents to pay for school meals, contribute to fundraising initiatives as well as purchase school uniforms and other items via their mobile device or tablet.

The Qkr payment app promises to significantly decrease the administrative burden of cash transactions for schools, and give parents greater control of their spending. And by allowing parents to pay for these items remotely, primary school children are no longer having to carry significant sums of money to and from school - a growing headache for parents everywhere.

Victorian Minister for Education, the Hon. Martin Dixon was in Melbourne for the pilot's launch and lauded the app as a big win for schools. The Minister said the technology marks an important step forward for schools everywhere and that the project should act as a template for the kind of mutually-beneficial partnerships that schools can make with private enterprises.

One of the first school's to join the pilot, Mentone Primary's Principal Marcelle Van Maanen, had this to say:

"QkR is one of those things that, once you've tried it, you realise you just can't live without it," she says. "The customisation and reporting features are easy to use, but it's also meant that parents aren't coming into school to pay for things all the time - we've actually got our foyer back."