If you want to play New York’s Powerball lottery without having to queue at a grocery store for a ticket, there’s now an app for that. Jackpocket allows you to use your iPhone to buy tickets – and the developer says it expects take-up to “significantly increase” jackpots. This week’s jackpot is currently sitting at a near-record $301M.
Amusingly, the process behind the scenes is entirely manual: employees are sent out to stores to buy paper tickets, which are then scanned and emailed to you to that you have a record of your numbers. Any ticket winning more than $600 is securely delivered to the owner so that they can claim the prize personally, reports the NY Post.
The app has been in beta-test for some time, and already has around 10,000 users who have so far won more than $50,000, says the developer. So far, Illinois is the only state lottery to offer direct mobile sales, so the company’s team of ticket-buyers may be in business for a while yet.
You can also play the New York Lotto and Mega Millions games, but you’ll need a NY cell number to receive a link to download the app.
