All Electricity Boards please follow the Kerala Model of 5% discount for Online Bill Payments

 

Should all States/UTs follow the Kerala example? 5% Discount for Online Bill of Kerala Electricity Bill Payments

To encourage Digital transactions and eliminate Cash / Cheque transactions, KSEB is offering 5% discount for online bill payments.

The 5% discount is the biggest offer so far offered amongst State Electricity Boards.

Very few state electricity boards offer a discount for online bill payments.

Normally, Payment Apps viz Paytm, Amazon Pay, etc offer cashback for 1^st time users. This attracts users and the users before payment of any electricity bill search Google for cashback offers.

The 5% discount offered by KSEB is in addition to the cashback offered by different payment apps.

The only drawback in Online Bill Payments, if for any reason, stupid or otherwise, the payment gets reversed after some time.

This leads to a very bad customer experience. The reversal is more painful, when the digital bill payment is paid via a third-party bank account or wallet.

BBPS (Bharat Bill Payment System) major benefits:

01) Biller’s customers can pay their bills in cash too across numerous touch points. The customers will get instant receipts of the payment. The only pain point is the processing fee per bill, if any charged by the collecting agents. The processing fee may be less as INR5/- . This discourage customers to pay via Cash at BBPS Counters and pay at the Biller’s physical collection only.  

Ideally, customers should not pay more than the bill amount and the processing fees of the BBPS touchpoints should be paid by the biller only.

The billers operating cost of own physical collection centres will be far more as compared to the processing fees paid to BBPS Cash collection touch points.

It would be beneficial to the Utility companies, if they offer 5% discount or cashback for digital payment of bills. It’s a win-win situation for the companies as well as the customers.

Hopefully, other states will follow the Kerala model very soon.

 

Few Examples:

Karnataka BESCOM statement dt. 16^th February 2015.

The honourable KERC has approved a rebate of .25% on the bill for those consumers who pay their bill through ECS. Moreover, ECS consumers will not be on the disconnection list. Consumers account will be debited only on the due date and not before that.

 

Reference Articles:

Watch the video of Kerala State Electricity Board 5% Cashback Offer|Electricity Bill Payment Online @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWrrBvCaL8E

KSEB not to cut off connections over non payment of bill; to levy penalty instead @ https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/kerala/kseb-not-to-cut-off-connections-over-non-payment-of-bill-to-levy-penalty-instead-1.5015971

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12.69 lakh people who paid the electricity bill online for the first time got 6.05 crore cash back

12.69 lakh consumers got 5 % cash back announced by KSEB for the first time to pay the electricity bill online. From May to August, a total of 6.05 crore rupees was given for cashback in this way.

In May, 6,78,162 people, 1,74,614 in June, 2,11,984 in July, and 2,04,262 in August paid the electricity bill for the first time using online payment system.

5 % cash back offer for first time online payment available till 2020 December 31

 

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