NEW DELHI: Public sector telecom major BSNL announced on Friday that it is planning to take, on lease, about 15,000 point of sale terminals to enable more customers to pay their bills and other transactions through digital methods.
The company sees digital transactions accounting for up to 40 percent of all bill payments by March 2017, nearly double of current levels.
“We are in the process of leasing about 15,000 point of sale (PoS) machines to be used by customer service centres so that electronic payment can be encouraged. That is also the direction in which the country is moving, everyone is looking at electronic payment methods,” BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava said.
Shrivastava also pointed out that the company plans to have about 20-50 customer service centres in each of its telecom districts, all of which will be equipped with PoS machines.
“We have 334 telecom districts or SSA. We are saying that in each telecom district, between 20-50 customer service centres should have PoS machines,” he said, adding that at present, around 1,500 to 2,000 point of sale machines are available in the telecom company’s own customer service centres.
At present, Shrivastava said, payment methods vary depending on the amount of bill. E-payment tends to be more favoured for Fibre To The Home (FTTH) billing, while cash finds more favour in the case of landline bill payment.