Easy Bill(7-Jan-2004)


7-Jan-2004

Easy Bill


Easy Bill has been promoted by the Hero Group to create a brand, which offers CONSUMER CONVENIENCE in Bill Payment, and reselling of communication services using e-transaction oriented products through a unique POS retail network serving the needs of the Indian middle class. At Easy Bill, convenience for the consumers is the key word.

The company has started with the collection of utility bills and plans to add ticketing, lottery, school fees, credit card payments and a number of other services later. The infrastructure designed today will be scalable enough to cater to all these services as well.

Bill Collection Network:

Easy Bill provides the bill payment services through a network of franchisees comprising of carefully selected neighborhood retailers. The retail outlets are being selected on their ability to provide an online/offline bill payment service in a most effective way, closer to the residence of the customers. Each retailer is fully equipped with a terminal, bar code reader, and telephone line. The system has a robust and proven technology, which is, similar to that used by Petrocards/Bank Credits Cards to ensure reliability, security and performance.

As consumer approaches the Easy Bill outlet with a bill, retailer scans the bill, receives payment, inputs payment value in terminal and gives the receipt back to the consumer. After collecting the payment, retailer deposits money in the bank and transmits data to the Easy Bill, which in turn debit retailer’s account, credits utility’s account and gives statement with bill receipts. The most important aspect is that it accepts cash as well as cheque and credit cards. According to a survey conducted by Hero Group more than 80 % of bill payment transactions in India are carried out in cash.

The distinctive features of the service are extended hours for bill acceptance, easy accessibility, friendly ambience and the security of an instant receipt generation. The consumers can pay their bills any time of the day at the neighborhood Easy Bill outlet, backed by state-of-the-art-technology and fully secure system for a nominal service charge. After depositing the bill, consumer gets an automatically generated receipt as a proof of the bill deposited. The data and money is transferred to utility service providers and records get updated immediately.

A typical Easy Bill outlet is located at Kiryana stores, medical stores, and departmental stores in residential areas. Thus the consumer will not have to plan the bill payment chore as a separate incidence and can club the same with shopping or even an evening walk, as most of these outlets are open till late in the evening as well as on holidays. The company has set up more than 450 outlets in Delhi so far.

For the utility service providers, the bill collection job has always been a logistic nightmare. The option of an outside organization thus collecting bills on behalf of the utility service providers help them on their core competence of providing the main services and leaving the bill payment collections job to Easy Bill. The company has already tied-up with the utility service providers such as NDPL (Tata Power and Delhi Government JV), Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB), Haryana State Electricity Board (HSEB), Hutch, Airtel, IDEA Cellular, Tata Indicom and Touchtel and is in talks with other leading utility service providers for similar tie-up.

The market size for the bill payments market today is close to 160 crores bill transactions annually across the country and is projected to touch 217 crores bill transactions in year 2005.

The company is planning for a massive service base with 15000 retailers across top 35 cities tied-up for Easy Bill franchisee. The vision is to have one retailer per sq km.

Archive

	Paying MTNL bills made easy for 45 lakh customers through Easy Bill
	E-mitra ties up with Easy Bill to launch
	Easy Bill
	And Q stands for Queue
	Easy Bill On Expansion Mode (The Financial Express , 16th September 2003)
	Hero's bill collection services
	Hero Groups “Easy Bill” Kicks Off (The Hindu, Business Line, New Delhi, July 23 2003)
	Hero mobikes doing well; no 3-wheeler plan
	Hero group plans to provide bill payments service
	Hero group sets up 'Easy Bill' (The Hindu business Line,New Delhi, Jan 10 2003)
	Hero Group To Set Up Retail Network For Bill Collection.(The Financial Express,All India , Jan 10 2003)
	Easy Bill by Hero Honda.(Economic Times,New Delhi, Jan 10 2003)
	Hero Group enters bill collection system.(Business Standard, New Delhi, Jan 10 2003)