Progressing in alignment with the “Digital India” initiative, power discoms in Andhra Pradesh has started accepting payments through BharatQR.
“The Eastern Power Distribution Company of AP Ltd (EPDCL) and the Southern Power Distribution Corporation of AP Ltd (SPDCL) are India’s first state-owned discoms to accept payments through Bharat QR,” said an official communique from the State Government.
BharatQR was developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Mastercard, and Visa, would require merchants to only display one QR code instead of multiple ones. It was launched this year in February and was devised on the direction set by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in last year.
In order to pay power bills via Bharat QR, user must log in to their bank’s app and scan the QR code on their electricity bill and the payment will be done instantly.
A user can enter her unique customer IDs online to generate a QR code and scan it using herbank’s app.
“Andhra Pradesh power distribution companies are setting an impressive example for discoms across India to adopt similar systems. Further, in keeping with the promotion of digital payments, we are exploring the possibility of abolishing surcharge levied to consumers on digital payments. Digitisation of transactions will ultimately lead to a reduction of costs for all stakeholders involved, ”said Nara Lokesh, state IT and rural development minister said in the statement.
“Payments company Visa and the state government have identified electricity bill payments as an important use case for payment digitisation. Given their wide reach, recurring nature of transactions and low ticket sizes, such payments are expected to drive shift in consumer behaviour towards digital payments; in particular, among first-time users,” added the statement.
“A low-cost acceptance solution, BharatQR has the potential to drive payment digitization at scale, and be a convenient way to pay and get paid for both consumers and merchants alike. Further, digitization of such citizen to government payments at scale, would significantly help reduce India’s net cost of cash estimated to be 1.7 percent of its GDP, while accelerating the country’s economic growth,” said T.R. Ramachandran, group country manager, Visa, India, and South Asia.
