Utility Billing and Payment System

Digital payment systems are an inevitable & significant component of any smart city. It makes it smart in reaching out to its citizens with an enhanced experience & ease in service offered. Payments are essential as it features in the majority of basic services offered to the citizens. These services are the core of the economic activity which includes business procurement, salaries, consumer spending, and tax collection

Smart payment technology plays a crucial role in achieving the vision of a smart city for which many aspiring smart cities are resorting to adopting such innovation. It can play a major role in improving the payments ecosystem across departments with various use cases that can cover multiple C2G (Citizen to Government) payments like electricity, toll & transit, taxi, water, education, tourists places, social services, healthcare, penalties, and public convenience.

With a rising acknowledgement of the value they bring to local governments and their citizens, they are now forming an integral part of the smart city suite. While the need and importance of smart payments infrastructure are well established for the upcoming smart cities, there exist several challenges both internal and external whether it is a manual way of payment, digitization of existing data, unified strategic vision or lack of knowledge and hesitation among the citizens. The developing nations are leveraging this cutting-edge concept to streamline their processes and enhance the standard of living for their citizens to overcome these challenges.

Bill Portlet

The portlet on the smart city dashboard showcases the bill amount to be paid for the current month and the due date along with the option for paying the bill through payment gateway, generating online downloadable & printable receipt.

Process Flow:

• Log in into the Smart City web portal/application- One can log in into the smart city web portal or mobile application with its user-id
• Monthly Bill Module- Among other modules present in the dashboard, this modules helps easy digital payment. The following are the options displayed for easy access:
  • View Bill Details & Pay Bill- The dashboard showcases the current bill due to be paid and provides an option for paying the bill through a payment gateway.
  • View Ledger Details- The ledger summarizes transactions by account, showing each account's debits and credits. Ledger summaries usually show also how different account balances are running (e.g., balances for expense accounts and balances for sales revenue accounts).
  • View Transaction History- Facilitates easy search of transaction history with a specific timeline for future references
• Online Payment- This option helps one to make the payment directly on the dashboard itself. It facilitates online payment through payment gateways integrated with banks.
• Online Receipt – The online receipt is generated once the payment is done for download and print. The user can utilize the receipt for future references in both soft and hard copy form.