Jackpocket App Allows You to Buy Lottery Tickets Using Your Phone

Called Jackpocket, the app sends you pictures of your tickets, entreating you to “think of Jackpocket like your really good friend who is always available to take your orders for lottery tickets and always makes sure to buy the exact ticket you requested in time for the drawing!”

First you choose the games you want to play, from Mega Millions to Powerball to the New York Lotto.

Jackpocket, which launched Monday, represents the first app that allows you to buy official state lottery tickets in New York using your phone, CEO Pete Sullivan said. So, if you live in New York and are over the age of 18, you can play.

The Jackpocket app is free to download.

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.

All of the physical tickets that are bought when there’s a jackpot going off are locked up at a safe in at an undisclosed location. Any ticket winning more than $600 is securely delivered to the owner so that they can claim the prize themselves. But, this is all now limited to New York-based lotteries – Jackpocket has plans to expand to California and New Jersey, but there’s no timetable for that yet.

There are probably a lot of skeptics out there since the Jackpocket company works as a courier service and is not tied to any state lottery.