Amidst RBI push, Bharat Bill Payment System claims 5 Cr monthly transactions

A few days after RBI governor Shaktikanta Das gave the statement that all categories of billers will be covered by Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), the interoperable bill payment platform has revealed volume and value processed by it.

The NPCI-owned entity has claimed to process around five crore transactions monthly along with onboarding over 150 billers. The new sanction by the central bank has allowed the platform to leash the full potential of BBPS and enable every citizen to pay their different bills under the same window.  

So far, serving five biller categories — telecom, gas, water, DTH and electricity, BBPS has also received the approval from RBI to bolster besides these categories, said AR Ramesh, chief of BBPS.

Education, club, housing societies, taxes and B2B invoicing are among the major emerging categories of the platform.

BBPS offers a wider reach through different channels of payment such as UPI, card payments — both debit and credit, internet banking, Aadhar-enabled payments can also be used by a customer while settling the bill.

As BBPS adds new retailers, the platform has been quite successful in reducing the bill's cost of collection, Ramesh further added in an interview with ET.

Meanwhile, BBPS not serving customers directly has approx 63 banks (all major public and private sector lenders) and 10 non-banks participants who on-board the billers for it.

According to the previous reports, the detailed framework regarding the platform’s integration will be released by the apex bank by September-end this year.

BBPS, which went live across India in October 2017 was launched as an interoperable system for repeated bill payments developed to make bill payments easier.

One-stop solution for all bill payments, BBPS permits users to pay bills through networks of agents or online, providing instant confirmation of the payment and the option of paying through multiple payment modes. 

Apart from the digitization of cash-based payments, the bill payment sector stands to benefit from features such as Standardized bill payment experience, a customer grievance redressal mechanism and a prescribed customer grievance fee.

Formerly, BBPS had 107 live billers, 101 live digital channels with 24 lakhs live- physical touchpoints in October 2018.