Nghe An Electricity strives to have nearly 45% of customers pay electricity bills without using cash.

On the afternoon of September 27, Nghe An Electricity Company held a conference on non-cash electricity bill payments. Attending the conference were representatives of district, city, and town electricity companies and intermediary banks. Photo: Thanh Le

Cashless payment rate reached 5.79%

According to the report of Nghe An Electricity Company, as of the end of August 2019, Nghe An Electricity Company is managing and selling electricity to 973,298 electricity customers. Of which, residential customers are 870,455, accounting for 89.4%. Non-residential customers are 102,843, accounting for 10.6%.

To implement the policy of cashless electricity payment, Nghe An Electricity Company has signed cooperation contracts with 6 partners, 6 banks and 6 intermediary organizations.

In September 2019, Nghe An Electricity Company coordinated with ECPAY collection unit to collect additional customers in Hung Nguyen, Nghi Loc and Yen Thanh areas.

Deputy Director of Nghe An Electricity Company Nguyen Xuan Loi delivered the opening speech at the conference. Photo: Thanh Le

According to Nghe An Electricity Company, the difficulty in implementing cashless electricity payment is that there are many rural customers and few customers and transaction points. Transaction addresses of banks and intermediary organizations are mainly concentrated in urban areas, towns and townships.

Some intermediary partners mainly implement cash collection (ECPay, VNPost…). Coordination with agencies and departments in implementing non-cash payments still faces many difficulties; there are not many support policies for customer groups in rural and mountainous areas.

As of August 31, 2019, the total number of customers making non-cash payments was 53,892, accounting for 5.79% of the total number of customers in the company (the plan assigned by the Northern Power Corporation in 2019 is 425,665 customers, a rate of 44.72%).

Extensive and comprehensive propaganda

At the conference, Nghe An Electricity Company and banks and intermediary organizations exchanged, discussed and proposed optimal solutions to implement cooperation plans for cashless electricity payment.

Accordingly, Nghe An Electricity Company will coordinate with banks and intermediary organizations to pay electricity bills without cash to ensure the most convenience for electricity customers.

Representative of Nghe An Electricity Company's Business Department reports on the implementation of cashless electricity bill payment. Photo: Thanh Le

"Cashless payment is a policy of the Government and the People's Committee of Nghe An province and is a common task of the whole society. To create a widespread spread to the community, Nghe An Electricity Company has organized to notify electricity customers about the official time to implement cashless electricity payment; assign targets to each officer and employee in the whole company and attach targets and responsibilities to each unit leader" - Deputy Director of Nghe An Electricity Company Nguyen Xuan Loi emphasized.

Representatives of banks presented plans to coordinate with Nghe An Electricity Company in implementing electricity bill payments via banks. Photo: Thanh Le

In addition, the unit issued notices to districts, cities, local authorities and agencies, departments and branches to disseminate information on the conversion of electricity bill payments at electricity counters to electricity bill payments through banks.

Print leaflets to distribute to customers; communicate through newspapers about the benefits of paying electricity bills through banks.

The Electricity Company works with banks to unify policies and solutions for customers' electricity bill payments at bank transaction offices in the area and publicly informs customers about the addresses of transaction offices for convenience in travel and transactions.

Cooperate with banks to provide professional training for staff and workers who work directly, disseminate and guide customers to make electricity bill payments through banks.

In September 2019, Nghe An Electricity Company and Viettel sent people to coordinate with electricity industry cashiers at electricity industry collection points to introduce and guide customers to pay electricity bills via Viettelpay. Transferring electricity industry cash collection desks to Viettel transaction points for customers to conveniently pay electricity bills.

Viettel Nghe An representative guides electricity bill payment via smartphone application. Photo: Thanh Le

In addition, the leaders of Nghe An Electricity Company have coordinated with other Electricity Companies to directly meet with leaders of organizations, agencies, departments, branches, hospitals, schools, and businesses that are paying salaries through banks to encourage officers and employees of those units to pay electricity bills through banks...

Regarding payment methods, customers have many options for paying electricity bills without cash. Specifically: registering for automatic monthly debit through banks; SMS and Mobile Banking, Internet Banking, E-wallets such as: Viettelpay, Momo, Payoo, Zalopay, Collection/Payment Authorization and online payment on the customer care center's website... This diversity is to support customers to pay electricity bills more conveniently.