Australian SMS payment platform company mHITs has launched Easy Canteen, a novel application for its technology that enables parents to pay for their children’s school lunch orders by SMS.

You might, from time to time, forget to give your kids money to pay for their lunch orders. Or perhaps your children have a habit of using the lunch money you give them to buy lollies instead of the alfalfa sandwiches for which it is intended. Either way, mHITs is hoping both parents and schools will sign up for Easy Canteen.

Here’s how it works.

Easy Canteen is the latest in a line of specific market offerings mHITs has planned. Earlier this year, the company launched a ‘pay for coffee by SMS’ service in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra, with a national rollout underway. In addition to retail point of sale, mHITs promotes its service as being an ideal payment method for purchase of online and mobile content and for vending machines, parking, taxi fare payment, charity donations and cash back offers.

mHITs won the People’s Choice award at the 2007 Next Big Thing Award, the 2008 ACT State iAward in the Financial Services Application Category and took out an episode of ABC TV’s The New Inventors in 2008. (Watch the clip here.)