Skip to main content

Tapping this box with your iPhone could change a child’s life

lunchbox mobile contactless payment charity donation news pay terminal
Image used with permission by copyright holder
We love Apple Pay and Android Pay, not just because of their convenience, but because tapping to pay for something with our phones still feels suitably futuristic. Giving money to charity is also a great feeling, and now there’s the chance to combine the two together, thanks to something called Lunchbox. Think of it as the modern, digital equivalent of dropping some spare change into a charity bucket.

The Lunchbox is a small, square contactless payment terminal designed to sit on the counter of a convenience store, cafe, local shop, or in just about any environment where people go to pay for something. It works with Apple Pay, Android Pay, and with contactless credit and debit cards, and is a super fast way to contribute to a worthy cause. Created by marketing agency Earnest Labs and payment tech company Payter, a simple tap of the Lunchbox currently donates 30 pence (that’s about 43 cents) to the charity Mary’s Meals.

Recommended Videos

What does this buy? Apparently, it’s enough for five school meals for the poorest children around the world. Mary’s Meals runs school meal programs for more than 1.1 million children in places such as India, Haiti, Malawi, and Liberia. The charity says that by providing a daily meal in school, it attracts hungry children to the classroom, where they can gain an education to build a better future. Truly life-changing.

The Lunchbox took six months to develop, according to Earnest Labs, after the question of why there wasn’t an easier way for people to do good charitable deeds when picking up lunch was posed to them. Now, Lunchbox charitable donation terminals have been placed at a series of popular lunchtime locations in London, where it’s hoped people will tap away as they grab their own food. There’s no pressure, it’s fast, and there’s no need to have any change in your pocket. It even lets us tech fans enjoy using mobile contactless payments at the same time.

Would you tap the Lunchbox if one was on the counter at your favorite lunch venue?

Andy Boxall
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
The iPhone 16 just beat the Galaxy S24 in a 5G speed test. Here are the results
A person holding the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Ookla recently conducted 5G speed and latency tests for the iPhone 16 series. The results showed that these phones performed exceptionally well compared to their predecessors and major competitors — even outperforming the Samsung Galaxy S24 series.

According to Speedtest data collected from 11 selected countries worldwide, the iPhone 16 series surpassed the earlier iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 series in terms of speed and latency. Compared to competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S24, the iPhone 16 achieved mixed results, yet still scored well overall.

Read more
Kino is the iPhone camera app I’d recommend to everyone
Recording a video in Kino camera app.

The Halide camera app is one of the hot favorites among folks who take mobile photo and video capture seriously. A fair share of content creators that I know have completely replaced the iPhone’s stock camera app with Halide, all thanks to the deep creative controls that it offers.

The app recently added a fantastic feature called Process Zero, which switches all the AI processing and delivers pristine shots. However, for all the deep controls that Halide has to offer, it also serves up a sharp learning curve. At times, it can even get overwhelming.

Read more
It’s the end of the road for these two iPhone models
Apple iPhone 6S Plus

Seeing your favorite handheld gaming device in a retro store has a unique way of making you feel old, but Apple might have topped it. According to the company, the iPhone XS Max and iPhone 6s Plus are now "vintage." They join the ranks of the iPhone 4 and even the iPad Pro 12.9-inch model.

It's not wholly unexpected. Apple declares a device vintage after five years, and that means it becomes more difficult to have that device repaired or to find replacement parts for it. Obsolete is applied to products that are more than seven years old, but sometimes certain variants get that label early.

Read more