Pocket money for boarding school, without the cash.
Parents top up from M-Pesa. Students buy at the canteen with a fingerprint. Every shilling lands on a statement you can both read.
Canteen
Just now · Chapati, Mandazi, Soda 300ml
−80.00
Top-up
21 Jul at 17:30 · TG21ABCDEF
+750.50
No cash
Nothing to lose, nothing to lend, nothing to be taken in the dormitory.
Free to top up
M-Pesa in from any Kenyan number, and back out to the parent at the end of term.
A cap you set
Daily and weekly ceilings, enforced by the till at the counter.
Cash on campus costs everybody
Boarding schools run on pocket money, and pocket money runs on cash. Here is the same term, told twice.
Today
Pocket money is handed over in cash on visiting day.
It gets lost, lent, or taken, and nobody can prove which.
You find out it has run out. You never find out what it bought.
A whole term’s money can disappear in one weekend.
The canteen counts a cash box by hand and hopes it balances.
With ThumbPay
Topped up from M-Pesa whenever you like, from any phone.
There is nothing to carry. The student’s fingerprint is the wallet.
Every purchase is its own line on a statement you can read.
Daily and weekly caps, enforced by the till at the counter.
The day closes itself, and a daily report proves that it balanced.
Three steps, and the cash never appears
Nothing for a parent to install, nothing for a student to carry, and nothing to count at the end of the day.
A parent tops up
Pay the school paybill with the student’s account number from any phone, or start it in the app and approve the prompt. The wallet updates the moment Safaricom confirms the payment.
M-Pesa
SJ47HK2P9L Confirmed.
KES 1,000.00 sent to NYERI HIGH SCHOOL for account 10482 on 4/5/26 at 9:12 AM.
The student buys
At the canteen the student puts a finger on the reader. The till finds the right wallet, shows what the balance will be afterwards, and takes the exact amount. No change, no cash box, no argument.
Canteen till
Paid · KES 80.00
1× Chapati, 1× Mandazi, 1× Soda 300ml
Balance left KES 580.50
Everyone sees where it went
The parent gets a running statement of every purchase. The school gets a till report that reconciles to the shilling. Whatever is unspent goes back to M-Pesa at the end of term.
Daily report
42 sales · KES 9,860
Ledger and M-Pesa agree. No drift.
The only new hardware anywhere in that flow is one fingerprint reader on the canteen counter.
One ledger, two very different jobs
The school needs the canteen to balance. The parent needs to know where the money went. Both come off the same set of entries.
Canteen till
ApprovedChapati ×1
20
Mandazi ×1
10
Soda 300ml ×1
50
Grace Njeri
KES 80
For schools
Run the canteen without a cash box, and close the books in minutes instead of evenings.
A till that runs on a phone or tablet
A priced item list and itemised receipts
Staff accounts, each with their own login
A daily report that reconciles to the shilling
Grace Njeri
ADM-2026-001
KES 1,240
balance
Weekly cap
280 / 700
For parents
Send money the way you already do. Then see exactly where it went, and set a ceiling before it goes anywhere too fast.
Top up by paybill from any phone
A statement of every purchase
Daily and weekly caps you control
Unspent balance back to your M-Pesa
Designed so the money cannot go wrong quietly
Handling other people’s money is the whole job. These are the rules the system enforces on itself, whatever the app on top of it asks for.
These are not aspirations. The ledger’s rules (entries sum to zero, a wallet never goes negative, money is conserved, replaying an instruction changes nothing) are checked automatically against thousands of generated cases on every single change to the code.
Where ThumbPay runs
Parents get an app on their own phone. The office gets a desktop console. The till at the counter is not on this list, because an attendant signs in on whatever phone or tablet is already there.
Top up, read the statement, and set the daily and weekly caps. Android 8 and above.
Coming soonThe same wallet and the same sign-in by one-time code. iOS 15 and above.
Coming soonThe office console: enrolment, the priced item list, staff accounts, and the daily report. Windows 10 and above.
Coming soonNothing to wait for in the meantime
Topping up has never needed an app. It is an ordinary paybill payment from any phone, using the school’s paybill number and your child’s account number. The apps add the statement, the caps, and withdrawals.
The things schools ask us first
If yours is not here, ask us directly. We would much rather answer it before your first term than during one.
Bring ThumbPay to your school
We take on a few schools at a time and work closely with each one. Tell us how your canteen runs today and we will show you the till and the console.
We usually reply within two working days.