BillDesk eyes school fees next

BillDesk eyes school fees next

Pilot mode on for tapping new segments like school and brick-and-mortar franchisees

Pratima Harigunani

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

PUNE, INDIA: Mumbai-based electronic bill payment major BillDesk is working on enabling electronic payment of school fees.

It is also expanding its touch points to the end customer via retail franchisees.

The e-payment facility will help the company cover the educational institutional segment beyond the IITs and IIMs to schools. Full integration of the process is on and is in pilot stage now, said M. N. Srinivasu, co-founder and director, BillDesk.

"We are planning to tap a larger segment of institutional fees through schools but the success depends on two factors: first our ability to deliver to this segment and secondly some level of electronic capability that the entity per se should have for us to integrate our technology into," he said.

On the anvil are plans to include customers who are not comfortable with Internet credit card payments.

"Hence we want to expand into a retail network with franchisees on our platform," he added.

BillDesk's completely in-house platform, which is channel-agnostic and integrates at the back-end of an entity's platform is also on the drawing board for upgradation to the next level: the mobile channel.

"Mobile medium is what banks are interested in now and so are private players who want to run mobile-based businesses," Srinivasu said.

BillDesk said it services about 30 banks such as SBI, Citibank and HDFC Bank and insurance companies such as Fidelity Mutual Funds, Birla Sun Life Insurance Co. Ltd, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Child and Life Insurance Corporation of India.

The company offers electronic payments and remittance solutions for verticals like banking, telecom, insurance, utilities and financial services.

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