E-money outfit sQuid has won a deal with Nottinghamshire County Council to provide children with payments cards for buying school meals.
Under the deal, the cashless payments service will be available to around 28,000 secondary school children and potentially 117,000 primary school kids. An initial rollout will be ready for the new school year in September.
Children can pay for small value items at schools with specially equipped terminals developed with till firms Cunninghams and CRB, meaning they do not need to carry cash.
Parents will have sQuid accounts enabling them to top up with money online, view their child's transactions and see what they have paid for and when, helping them to check their kids are eating healthy school meals, says sQuid.
Lisa Griffiths, operations manager, Nottinghamshire County Council, says: "We really like the fact that the payment system is specific to each transaction, meaning much reduced administration time and cost as we don't need to manage the parent pupil account. We believe parents will appreciate that too."