If you are still making those trips to the telephone department and the electricity office, sweating it out in the long queues just to pay your bills, here's good news for you. You can accomplish all those tasks right from your home while relaxing in your home, reading the latest book of your favourite author.
Well, How is this possible? The answer is: Electronic Clearing Service. You can now pay your electricity bills, telephone bills, loan instalments and insurance premia through your friendly neighbourhood bank by just giving them the instructions in writing to use the ECS. And this service is for FREE.
The Reserve Bank of India has introduced the Electronic Clearing Service (Debit) scheme to provide faster method of effecting periodic and repetitive payments by debiting customers' accounts directly.
Present coverage of the scheme:
Presently, the scheme is available at Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, New Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Steps have already been initiated to extend the scheme to Ahmedabad and other cities.
How does it work?
Utility Companies, banks/institutions receiving payments towards electricity bills/ telephone bills/ loan instalments/ insurance premia, initially collect mandates from their customers for collection of amounts due from them by direct debit to their accounts with banks. The mandate provides details such as the name, account number, name of bank/branch etc., duly certified by the bank concerned.
Then the customer will request the bank to pay the money, before the due date of the bill.
The bank debits the customers account and sends an advice to the customer about the payment.
Benefits of this service:
To the institution
Faster Collection of bills and better cash management by the companies help customers avoid going to the collection centres/banks and stand in long queues for payments.
To the customer
Automatic debiting to the accounts once the customers give the mandates to that effect cuts down the endless and mindless waiting in the queue.
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