Power bill payment via UPI apps, credit cards hit in Telangana

However, people could pay their power bills through the TGSPDCL website and the corporation's mobile app. The decision was announced through TGSPDCL official 'X' handle. The consumers can also pay their bills through collection centres of the company.

Hyderabad: Electricity consumers in the State will not be able to pay their bills through third party apps such as PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, Amazon Pay and others from Monday as banks have stopped accepting electricity bills of the Telangana State Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TGSPDCL) through such apps. Payment via credit cards of some banks will also be affected.

People can pay their power bills through the TGSPDCL website and the corporation’s mobile app. The decision was announced through TGSPDCL official ‘X’ handle. The consumers can also pay their bills through collection centres of the company.

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The situation could be temporary, according to SPDCL officials, who said over 85 percent of the energy bill payments in the SPDCL jurisdiction were being made through the third party application providers (TPAPs). The inability to use the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) based apps for bill payment will continue till the apps register and become active on the National Payments Corporation of India’s Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) as per directions of the Reserve Bank of India.

Officials said they had asked the UPI app managements to resolve the issue at the earliest so that consumers do not face problems in making payments.

“We are expecting to resolve the issue at the earliest. Our Website and Mobile App are user friendly. We have over a crore users. We don’t think that people would face problems using them,” the officials stated.

The RBI has made it mandatory to route all credit card bill payments by third party apps through National Payments Corporation of India’s Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) from July 1. Though apps such as CRED and PhonePe are members of BBPS, major credit card issuers such as HDFC, ICICI and Axis Bank are not yet live on the BBPS platform to receive credit card bill payments.

But for people having credit cards issued by SBI, Bank of Baroda, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, Federal Bank, Canara Bank, RBL Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, there is no need to worry. These banks are live on the BBPS platform and so customers can continue to make payments through third party apps.

Interestingly, among the 34 banks that have been authorised to issue credit cards, 26 are yet to become active on BBPS. The RBI has taken the initiative as it wants all bill payments to be centralised. This would give it a clear picture about payment trends and would also allow it to track and control fraud.

Meanwhile, Payments Council of India (PCI), the payments industry body, has requested RBI to extend the deadline for BBPS compliance by 90 days to avoid any disruption in services.