XPay.Life and NBBL to digitise cash counters of BEST Electricity in Mumbai

By Leandra Monteiro

XPay.Life has joined hands with NPCI Bharat BillPay Ltd. (NBBL), the wholly owned subsidiary of National Payments Corporation of India, to digitally transform the cash counters of BEST. This initiative will facilitate seamless electricity bill payments for millions of BEST customers. The BEST’s BOCP (Biller’s Own Collection Point) will now be completely digitised with user-friendly solutions for its customers to undertake a plethora of utility transactions over and above electricity bills payments.

The digitisation – powered by NBBL will take place through three different methods of payments. The first method is to deploy intelligent point of sales (POS) machines at select cash counters of BEST, where customers can pay their bills through any mode of payment be it cash or UPI. The customer gets a receipt instantaneously and the transaction gets completed within 10 seconds.

In the second method, Touch Screen Kiosks will be deployed at various BEST locations for customers to choose their convenient time and method of payment. The kiosk will be equipped with a cash validator to weed out fake notes. Payments made by the customers using this kiosk will provide safety; enabled through the Bharat BillPay platform.

The third payment option is path-breaking and is aimed at getting the counters of BEST to the comfort of customers’ homes. The XPay.Life Mobile van will be deployed for BEST and it will travel to the locations of the customers on select days of the week, enabling payment through both touch screen kiosks and Mobile POS installed inside the van. The XPay.Life Mobile Van will be a full spectrum service provider for all the customer needs starting from Electricity bill collection to many more services soon to be added. The biggest factor is also that all the machines inside the BEST Mobile Van are all powered by Solar energy and a UPS that charges when being driven around – a truly green initiative.

The customers will not only be able to pay BEST bills at all these locations but also can get access to thousands of utility bills like LPG booking, mobile bill payments, insurance payments, DTH recharges, and so on.

Speaking on the occasion, Lokesh Chandra, IAS, GM of BEST said, “We are excited to partner with Bharat BillPay and XPay.Life to offer a unique proposition to all our customers by making electricity bill payments convenient, easy, and safe through multiple innovative payment methods. This initiative of digitising bill payments will benefit more than 10.50 lakh BEST customers to manage their electricity bills using the mode of their choice.”

Commenting on the initiatives, Noopur Chaturvedi, CEO of NPCI Bharat BillPay Ltd. (NBBL) said, “We are glad to be an integral part of the partnership that will provide a superior and user-friendly electricity bill payment experience for numerous BEST customers. With this innovative suite of offerings, electricity bill payments collected will now be digitised and made further convenient for BEST. We firmly believe this initiative is slated to revolutionise the way utility bill payments are made.”

Rohit Kumar, Founder & CEO of XPay.Life said, “We are one of the most enterprising fintech start-ups of the country. Our aim is to make life simpler with secure transactions and innovations. Our intelligent PoS machines and Mobile Vans are one of our most innovative and meaningful offerings, which we are excited to launch in partnership with BEST and NBBL. This is the beginning of our initiatives towards supporting a digital India and we shall be extending the same services to all other ESCOM’s in the country soon.”