ICICI Extends ePayment Gateway in Hyd

ICICI EXTENDS E-PAYMENT GATEWAY TO HYDERABAD

"Forget bills, think Billjunction.com" is the advice ICICI Ventures Ltd is giving to the denizens of Hyderabad, having successfully done a soft launch of the electronic bill presentment and payment service (EBPPS) here.

The Asia' first one-stop payment gateway for all bills, launched in Mumbai in 1998, and extended to Delhi, Calcutta, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, is formally launching in Hyderabad next month. It's also going to Chennai this week, and to Cochin, where it'll be providing the back-end to a similar portal by KEC.

More than 50 utilities in the country have tied up with portal, including in Hyderabad, the HMWSS, the MCH, ISPs like Sify, insurance companies LIC, Prudential ICICI, and Max New York, a public school, cellular service provider Tata Cellular, private telecom player Tata Teleservices and Standard Chartered credit cards. It has already tied up with BSNL, while talks are still on with APTransco.

"We are offering a complete solution and score over competitors by offering customer service through a 24X7 call centre, and features like regular notification about bills etc. Moreover, customers can transfer this facility to any of the metros, in case of a relocation," says G V Chandrasekhar, Billjunction's manager business development. The company is hoping to rope in the two lakh Internet savvy population here, through offline, online and through retail chain registration centres such as book shops, cyber cafes etc. Registered customers can pay 10 bills on payment of Rs 59. The company's revenues are commissions from the utilities as well as customers. Of the Rs 5.90 per transaction, Billjunction gets Rs 2.90, while Rs 3.00 goes towards expenditure of RBI's ECS system, on which the gateway works (RBI gets Rs 0.50, sponsoring bank - here ICICI Bank Rs 1.50, and the debited bank gets Rs 1)

ICICI is however targeting banks wanting to provide similar services for chunk of its revenues, and is already in talks with GTB, Andhra Bank, and SBH for the same. The service will also soon be available at kiosks at the 35 ICICI ATMs, and fixed lines and mobile phones.

The portal claims to have over 1,000 registered customers, doing around 40-50 bills per week even before the formal launch. It's targeting Rs 1 crore worth transaction by end of this fiscal, for which it needs 20,000 transactions by 10,000 customers. On a national scale, it needs one lakh transactions and 55,000 customers to break-even and ICICI ventures hopes to make Bill Junction Payment Ltd a Rs 500 crore company by 2004.