Innovations Increasing the Digital Utility Bill Payments Ratio in India

Multi-utility Bill payments a decade ago was a cumbersome task with hurrying to the billers collection points to pay water bill or any other utility bills, only to be welcomed by a tortoise paced queue and fixed time-window for the bill payment. The counters were always crowded, the whole process reached times when people elbowed each other during the demonetization period that was implemented in November 2016 that cast light on the requirement of alternate digital payments that instigated the less-cash economy.

The multi-utility bill payments can be done for the recurring payments which are RBI approved categories of Electricity, Water, Gas( piped gas and LPG), Telecom( Mobile, Broadband, landline) and DTH. There are 

1. More than 36.1 lakh PNG connections and online gas payment modes are quite less numbered
2. More than 6.3 crore active DTH connections in India
3. There are a whopping 120 crores mobile connection including the prepaid and postpaid services
4. There are more than 32.4 crore active broadband subscribers
5. The electricity sector generates 18 crore bills per month but surprisingly only 10 percent of the total payment is received through a digital channel.

With all these statistics provided by the NPCI, there is a strong revelation that most of the digital payments happen for the category of telecom Postpaid bill payments including the Mobile postpaid payment, broadband postpaid payment like Airtel postpaid broadband bill payment, and landline postpaid payment is seeing high digital dependancy. The major factor is the unavailability of the bill collection units for the independent telecom service providers in the vicinity of the customer. 

The next highest bill payments on the digital platform is done DTH connection with easy dth recharge done through mobile apps or the websites. The reason why electricity bills are seeing fewer digital payments is due to the dependency of the customers to pay the bills through the biller’s own collection points.

Hence to provide Best electricity bill payment online, there are a number of mobile applications and bill payment service providers collaborated with a number of billers to potentially collect the revenue from the customers thus reducing the turn-around-time at the biller’s own website, helps in increasing efficiency and queue clearing in the counters.

XIPHIAS XPay Life Pvt Ltd is a start-up based in Bangalore providing a Full Spectrum of digital bill payment solutions in the form of a mobile app, web, ATP kiosk, POS machines and Mobile Vans. It is providing one of the best in the online bill payment apps by XPay Life with the highest order of security through blockchain technology. The website also offers bill payment services with payment modes through the credit or debit card.

For the digital inclusion of the people who prefer the payment through cash, XPay Life has innovated the infrastructures called as ATP( Any time payment) Kiosk that provides round-the-clock payment facility and accepts cash as a bill payment mode along with the other digital modes of payment and makes the whole transaction process digital. Also, it is a BBPS/NPCI approved agent institution and has 250 plus billers spread across seven recurring payment categories. The POS machines are third party man held devices that will be replacing the technology at the billers collection units and hence increasing efficiency and clearing queues as well.

The Mobile Van is India’s first technological approach towards rural India inclusion in the Digital India mission through XPay Life. The Mobile Van equipped with ATP kiosk, Vending Machine and mini-ATMs. The vending machine dispenses free condoms and sanitary pads on each transaction and hence encouraging the rural mass for digital inclusion in the bill payment sector.

With these kinds of innovations and infrastructures, the bill payment sector will be experiencing high ratio of digital bill payments in the country for all categories.