Forget cash for honesty boxes - pay with an app
Gone are the days of scavenging through your car to find coins to pay for produce at a roadside stall, now you can pull out your smart phone and pay with that.
The first digital honesty box has been set up at a Taranaki produce stall, encouraging customers to use their phones to pay for produce through an app.
Organic produce sellers Kaitake Farms are using the My Honesty Box app and farmer Toby Dixon said they loved the new system.
‘‘It’s so simple,’’ Dixon said. ‘‘There’s only a handful of people who don’t have these [a smart phone] in their pocket.’’
The My Honesty Box smartphone app requires customers to scan the code on an honesty box, select the produce they want, and pay for it using the app.
Dixon said they had previously had an internet banking payment set up, as an alternate to cash, that involved back and forth txts with customers, putting notes in the honesty box, transferring money and it could get messy.
The director of My Honesty Box and software developer Dave Clarke agreed.
‘‘It was such a clunky process,’’ Clarke said. ‘‘I said, ‘it looks like an opportunity for us’.’’
It took Clarke and developer Dave Fox eight months to design the app.
Clarke said the idea of the app wasn’t about reducing theft, more about simplifying the process.
Clarke now sees My Honesty Box going further than just produce stalls.
He hoped to see it at markets, on golf greens for fees, tennis courts, and more.
‘‘We have put the traditional honesty box online,’’ he said. ‘‘No more worries about having the correct change.’’
Kaitake Farm farmer Ryan Gut said the app also opened up the opportunity for people to buy more produce, rather than being limited to their cash.