BHUBANESWAR: A missed call is all it will take to pay your electricity bills and make purchases. Tata Power Western Odisha Distribution Limited (TPWODL) and Mission Shakti have roped in a UPI-based payment system - MissCallPay for the smart payment system.
For making a payment, the user will have to make a missed call to a number and instantly get a return call for verification of the payment. The payment is made after he/she enters the PIN. People do not require a smartphone as they can use it with either feature phone and transactions happen in local as well as 11 other languages.
Odisha became the first state to use the UPI-based payment system for payment of power bills after the state government launched the miss-call-based payment system at the first Fintech Festival here recently. TPWODL has tied up with the firm in an initiative to provide convenient bill payment service to electricity subscribers in the western region of the state.
Corporate communication head of TPWODL Manoj Patnaik said the new payment system that can also run on feature phones without internet has been introduced on a pilot basis. It will be commercially launched soon and electricity consumers can pay their power bills through MissCallPay, he added.
MissCallPay, India’s first voice-based payment company runs on UPI 123Pay, operated by Minkville Innoventures Pvt Ltd. The Gujarat-based startup aims to make the UPI-based payment system the safest solution for unserved population or non-tech savvy people using feature phones to enable them to go cashless. The startup has designed a payment solution simply keeping in mind the feature phone users and non-tech savvy people simply using a miss call, which is a known habit of people.
As per the system. one needs to give a missed call to a merchant-specific number to initiate a transaction, post which the users get a call back to confirm the merchant’s name and amount over a voice call in their local language, and once they confirm the transaction by inputting their UPI PIN for their bank account linked with UPI the transaction is processed and SMS notification is sent to both the payer and payee.
“Many people do not know how to read and write. But most of them know how to speak and listen. In MissCallPay, the user will get a call back in which the system will talk him/her in the mother tongue leaving little scope for not getting what is happening. The transaction will happen in the local language,” said founder Mitesh Thakker.
MissCallPay also now provides service to around 3,000 Mission Shakti groups that are using the system on a pilot basis. It has also been extended to around 10,000 farmers supported by the Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India for procurement of seeds, fertiliser, pesticides and rental of farming equipment required during the ongoing cropping season in the state.
“World’s first miss-call-based electricity payment was recently made by the consumers of TPWODL. This was for the first time that any bill was paid through a missed call. Once the pilot programme is successful, rural Odisha where the internet is still a challenge would be a pioneer of digital payment growth,” Thakker added.