Canteen.

The canteen is the last place in the school still running on loose change.

• Prepaid parent wallet

  We're building a balance a parent tops up in advance — from the same app where they already pay fees — so a child carries no cash and the canteen never makes change.

• Online top-ups

  Top-ups will run through the payment gateway the school already uses for fees — UPI or card — so the wallet funds in seconds and the parent gets the same receipt they trust.

• Tap-to-pay point-of-sale

  At the counter, a card or a QR on the student's phone is designed to settle the order against the wallet in one tap — no PINs at the till, no queue stalled on someone counting coins.

• Per-student spend limits

  Each parent will set a daily cap — a sensible ten or twenty rupees, not the whole balance — so a top-up meant to last a fortnight isn't gone by Tuesday's second samosa.

• Dietary blocks

  A parent will be able to block items at the source — nuts for an allergy, fried food on a doctor's word — and the till is designed to refuse those lines before the child ever pays for them.

• Statement of every line

  Every top-up and every purchase — item, time and amount — is meant to land on one running statement, so a parent sees exactly what was bought and the balance reconciles to the rupee.

• Low-balance nudges

  When the wallet runs thin, a quiet notification is designed to reach the parent before the child is turned away at the counter — a top-up prompt, not an empty tray.

• Counter close-out

  At day's end the canteen is designed to reconcile in a glance: total sales, top items and any refunds, all on the same one ledger the school's finance already runs on.

• 01 / 04

  It will read the children you already enrol. The wallet is designed to sit on the same session- and branch-scoped student record as fees and attendance — so a sibling switch, a campus, a promoted class all resolve correctly, with no separate canteen roster to keep in step.

• 02 / 04

  It is meant to settle onto the one ledger. Top-ups will run through the same payment gateway as fees and land on the same finance ledger — so the canteen's takings are not a second set of books, they're another column the accountant already knows how to read.

• 03 / 04

  It will live on the same web, iOS and Android apps. A parent is designed to top up and set a dietary block from the phone; the canteen runs the till from the counter; finance closes the day from the desk — one login each, no new app to install.

• 04 / 04

  It will be within reach of Sol, the AI agent. The same assistant that answers questions across the school is intended to sit over the wallet too — a quiet way to ask what a child has been buying, not a fourth tool to learn.

Where this is going

A child should never carry cash to lunch, and a parent should never wonder what it bought. That is the canteen we're building.