SPML powering e-payment services

SPML Technologies Ltd, a pioneer in e-payment services has installed user-friendly 24X7 Any Payment Time (ATP) for utility consumers for collection of  payments and booking tickets. The installed systems are currently configured to accept Electricity Bill payments, telecom/mobile bills, insurance premium, domestic air tickets, BMTC monthly and day pass, SBI Credit Card payments etc.

The company is in discussion with other utility organizations and service providers for extending similar services. With the use of ATP, consumer can make payment by way of cash, cheque or cards. 
ATPs are basically User-friendly machines that act like virtual employees, collecting and delivering information quickly and consistently without human interaction.

BESCOM as part of its efforts to provide value added services to its customers has installed ATP machines for making electricity bill payments. 64 such ATPs are installed in the prominent places of BESCOM & BMTC premises. 

In Bangalore City, SPML has already installed 73 systems and 101 systems in Karnataka and 155 in India. Apart from Karnataka, SPML Tech has installed systems in Haryana, Baroda, Surat, Hyderabad, Raipur, Jabalapur etc. Future plans include installing and maintaining 1000 such machines across the country for collection of payment and issuing/booking tickets for railways, transport, cinemas etc. 

In less than 16 months of operations more than 90,00,000 consumers have transacted through these ATPs. For every two seconds there's a consumer using their ATP, an official statement said.

The machine can be operated by the customers themselves and will be operational 24 hours. The main features are:
• 24 hours payment acceptance.
• Accepts Cash/Cheque/DD/Pay order/Credit Card.
• Issues acknowledgement for every payment made.
• Touch Screen and multimedia based system.
• Accepts Rs 1000, 500, 100, 50, 20, 10 and 5 Rupee Denominations.
• The accepted currency denominations will be displayed on the screen.

When the customer places the voucher/bill in the designated location, under the barcode scanner, the ATP will automatically get started. Suitable prompts are provided for proper user guidance. The customer needs to choose the mode of payment either by cash/ceque. Once the amount is confirmed by the customer, the ATP will prompt "please Insert Cash/Cheque". The customer then inserts 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 on by one into the cash acceptor slot. The system identifies the denomination and detects fake currencies and updates the data and issues a acknowledgement to the customer. A customer support executive will be stationed initially at this machine to help the customers in paying the bills.

At BESCOM ATP locations the citizens can avail the following services:
1. BESCOM bill payment
2. BSNL bills payment (starting by July-end '08)
3. SBI Credit card payment
4. Domestic AIR tickets ( all airlines)
5. BMTC Monthly pass
6. SPICE Telecom post paid  bills & recharge coupons

Also launching very soon:
1. ICICI Prudential life premium
2. Cinema tickets
3. Credit Card Payment & Insurance
4. Property tax, water bills, school fees etc

According to William D'Souza, VP, Business Development, at one of their ATP location, in 4 hours with a single cheque, 4043 transactions (bills) were paid and receipt was generated for each bill,
SPML Technologies Ltd, division of M/s Subhash Projects & Marketing Limited (SPML) was set up to provide IT related services across the country. SPML is a leading Infrastructure Development organization with more than 25 years of EPC contracting experience in Water, Power and Infrastructure.

SPML Technologies Ltd is a company that has carved a niche for itself in the segment of BPO and IT for providing solutions and services. It has offices throughout the country and operates from Bangalore.
(For further details contact: 080- 22110461, 62, 63. email: srinivas@sums.in or william@sums.in , website: www. sums.in).