AP: Now pay electricity bills through mobile phones

Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh government, in association with Airtel, has developed a service that would allow customers to make electricity bill payments through their mobile phones. The new service would be launched on Monday by the state's Minister for Communication and Information Technology Ponnala Lakshmaiah, K Gopinatha, the director, Electronic Delivery System (EDS) and Meeseva of state's IT Department, told PTI.

Giving details of the new service, Gopinatha said Airtel has developed a new software in coordination with Infosys and they would charge Rs 10 per transaction. Over 150 services like issuing of income certificate, renewal of trade licenses and birth/ death certificates have already been provided through Eseva and MeeSeva (digitally sent certificates issued by various departments) centres across the state.

Initially, the service (payment of electricity bill) will be provided to Airtel customers only and later it would be extended to other network services, Gopinatha said. With the launch of the service, Airtel customers would be able to make electricity bill payments through cellphones and shortly 7-8 more utility services like water bill and property tax would also be included in the service net, he said.

"We have conducted a trial run and other utility services would be provided very soon," he added. "We have been negotiating with other service providers, including BSNL to include in the new scheme. Once we finalise the deal, the charges for each transaction through mobile phones would definitely come down," he said. The customers would be able to make payments of bills just sitting in their office, home or anywhere, thus saving time, he said.

For availing the service, the customer has to go to any Airtel outlet for topping up his mobile wallet (re-charge) as per the bill amount, he said. There were over one crore Airtel SIM card holders in Andhra Pradesh and 20,000 Airtel outlets, Gopinatha said. Last month, over 40 lakh transactions (of payment of

electricity bills) were recorded in different Eseva centres across the state, he added.