Any Time Payment Machines from SPML

Taking Convenience to a New High

By now, we are so used to this convenience - paying our electricity bills any time - that we do not give much thought to the people behind this citizen-friendly initiative. Bescom’s Any Time Payment (ATP) machines are installed and maintained by Subhash Project & Marketing Ltd (SPML), pioneers in e-payment services.

In Bangalore City, SPML has already installed 15 systems and 35 systems in Karnataka. SPML is planning to install 75 systems in Bangalore City by next March. Apart from Karnataka, SPML has installed systems in Haryana and installation of systems in Baroda Noida, Raipur, Delhi are in progress. SPML Tech is planning to install and maintain 1000 such machines across the country for collection of payment and issuing/booking tickets for Railways, Transport, Cinemas etc. 

The company estimates that over the last six months, more than 2.4 million consumers have benefited from the ATPs.

Bescom Asst Engineer Manjunath appealed to the people to make full use of these ATPs. The machines are installed near Sangam Circle, 8th Block, Jayanagar, and also at all Bescom sub-divisions of Jayanagar, JP Nagar, Wilson Garden, Chickpet, Madiwala, Indiranagar, Malleswaram, MG Road and many other places in and around Bangalore.

A word about these machines of the future. The ATP is designed for collection of payment from customers by cash, cheque/DD/ Credit/Debit Cards. It is unmanned and can be operated by the customers themselves and is 24/7. The machine issues acknowledgement for every payment, and is based on touch screen multi-media based system which is very user-friendly.

Sri Srinivas, VP, Operations and Sri William D’Souza, VP, Business Development, explained how the ATP has simplified bill payments to the consumer. When you as a customer place the voucher/bill in the designated location, under the barcode scanner, the ATP automatically is activated. Suitable prompts are provided for proper user guidance. You need to choose the mode of payment either by cash/cheque, etc. Once the amount is confirmed by the customer, the ATP will prompt “please insert cash/cheque”. You then insert the cash/cheque through the designator slots. Diagram on how to insert the cash/cheque is printed below the slots. The cheque is automatically taken in by transport mechanisms and parameters such as cheque number etc are read from the MICR fields and an acknowledgement is issued to the customer with the bill and the cheque detail. In case of cash payment the customer can insert the currencies one by one into the cash acceptor slot. The System identifies the denomination and detects fake currencies and the updates the data and issues an acknowledgement to the customer.

SPML is one of the largest and most diversified engineering construction firms in India, while its IT Division, SPML Technologies Ltd, provides IT-related services across the country. SPML Technologies Ltd has carved a niche for itself in the segment of BPO and IT for providing solutions and services. It has offices almost through out the country and operates from Bangalore.

Presently, it is involved in installing and maintenance of user-friendly and 24/7 Any Time Payment (ATP) machines for utility consumers. The installed systems are currently configured to accept electricity bill payments, and it proposes to extend similar services for phone companies, and cinema ticket booking.