EVNNPC’s Deputy Director General Le Quang Thai said that electricity bill collection via third parties is not only convenient for customers but also to improve labor productivity and transparency while preventing tax losses to the State budget.
Over the past time, EVNNPC has signed cooperation agreements with 12 banks, including the Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB), the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank), the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), the Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank) and seven functional agencies, including the Military Industry-Telecoms Group (Viettel), the Vietnam Post Corporation, and the Vietnam Payment Solution Joint Stock Company (VNPAY) to collect electricity bills.
Accordingly, these banks and companies created favorable conditions for their customers through such payment methods as automatic debit payment, Internet Banking/Mobile banking, e-wallets, payment at banks’ transaction offices, and payment at EVNNPC’s customer care offices, etc.
By the end of the first quarter of 2019, 8.96% of electricity customers (or 881,064 electricity users) of EVNNPC paid electricity bills without cash, equivalent to 60.9% of the company’s turnover. Thereby, the habit of electricity payment and collection in the Northern region of the country has been changed.
Nevertheless, there are several difficulties facing the cashless payment method. Many customers living in remote and rural areas do not want to use bank accounts, while transaction offices of banks and other third party organizations are mostly located in urban areas.
Therefore, to fulfill the set targets for 2019, the Electricity of Vietnam assigned each subordinate to making plans and implementing cashless payment methods suitable for specific areas. In addition, they should accelerate the use of information technology to select appropriate cashless payment methods, while upgrading software to effectively control and manage electricity payment activities.
Notably, Viettel also supports EVNNPC to implement cashless payment through the application ViettelPay.
ViettelPay includes many utilities and features such as an electronic wallet which is not only available for subscribers of the Viettel network but also for subscribers of other telecommunication networks.
Currently, Viettel has networks and services throughout the entire country, including in remote, mountainous, and rural areas. It is expected to facilitate EVNNPC in boosting electricity bill payment without cash.
Translated by Khanh Ngan