Up to now, 27 banks nationwide are cooperating with power corporations / power companies to provide electricity bill payment services. When customers finish paying electricity bills at banks, information is immediately transferred to power companies for clearing bills, erasing debts through an information technology system being connected between banks and power companies.
If a customer has already made payment, but his/her family does not know and make another payment, the system will not accept. The power sector has set up a centralized database which is one of the important conditions to facilitate service payments via banks, according to Mr. Pham Tien Dung.
At the Seminar, Mr. Nguyen Quoc Dung – Director of Business Department of Vietnam Electricity (EVN), said that EVN has embarked on collecting electricity bill payments via banks and intermediaries since 2015. This is one of the solutions to improve the labor productivity of EVN, while enhancing the convenience and eliminating troubles for customers.
As of the end of 2017, the manual collection of electricity bill payments at customers’ houses has fundamentally no longer existed. The proportion of electricity bill payments via banks/intermediaries has risen sharply over the years, from 14.88% in 2015 to 44.95% in 2017.
Mr. Nguyen Quoc Dung, Director of EVN’s Business Department, shared his experiences in deploying electricity bill payment via banks at the seminar
How to make customers change their payment habits is one of the difficulties confronted by EVN when converting the electricity bill payment mode. As a result, EVN and its subsidiaries have performed step by step: Firstly, power companies relocated the collection of electricity bill payments from customers’ premises to centralized collection locations of the power companies or at banks’/intermediaries’ transaction offices. Secondly, the payment via centralized collection locations has been gradually converted into payment via banks/intermediaries.
In parallel, EVN has promoted communication activities in the mass media, through meetings with residential community, or communicating to customers when they come to transaction offices of the power sector, etc., so as to make customers understand benefits of electricity bill payment via banks. At the same time, EVN has cooperated closely with banks/intermediaries to timely resolve requests or questions of customers during the payment processing.
The conversion of electricity bill payment by EVN faces some difficulties in dealing with customers in rural, remote and isolated areas because banks are mainly located in central and developed areas. In addition, bank counters work only in administrative hours, the payment workload is substantial, consequently customers have to wait a long time to be served.
In the coming time, EVN will continue to develop their online payment policies for each customer group; encouraging the payment of electricity charges by automatic debits; deploying online payment via websites and OTT mobile application;
In areas where banks are not available, the power sector will promote payment via intermediaries to provide the highest convenience to electricity consumers.
Targets to 2020:
- 70% of the electricity bills in cities, urban districts, towns, etc. in central cities will be paid via banks.
(According to the Prime Minister's Decision No. 241/QD-TTg dated February 23, 2018 approving the scheme on accelerating the payment via banks for public services: tax, electricity, water, hospital fees and social security payments)
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