When most transactions are taking the online route, how can bill payments be left behind? The Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) is set to expand its online bill payment base from two lakh customers at present to 10 lakh.
The power utility will bank on the mobile governance initiative of the State government, which was launched on Monday, for more electricity customers to choose the virtual route of payment. As on March this year, Bescom, which covers eight districts, had nearly 90 lakh consumers belonging to categories spread across domestic and industrial, apart from public lighting and water supply, among others.
Bescom Managing Director Pankaj Kumar Pandey told The Hindu that there were three advantages from this expansion. “It will reduce the load on our cash counters. Apart from this, it will make cash flow easier and spread payments over a month instead of most consumers paying their bill amount on the last day,” he said. The power utility has called for tenders for an ‘aggregator’ to ensure that more consumers opt for online payment. The aggregator will be penalised if the numbers drop, Mr. Pandey added.
Even as Bescom looks at multiplying online payment options, consumers utilising the available options have fallen prey to fraudulent sites. This, despite a warning given to consumers this September about sites “misrepresenting themselves as Bescom agents for collection of electricity charges”. Most complaints were against one particular commerce platform, which was not empanelled by Bescom.
Mr. Pandey said consumers will have to make use of information provided on the Bescom website to ensure that they pay only through approved channels.
