Hyderabad: Educational institutions brought under Bharat Bill Pay System

Hyderabad: A new push to the Bharat Bill Pay System (BBPS) by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) come a sigh of relief to several educational institutions, State-level school and technical boards, and universities to go for seamless integration of digital payment transactions. Reason being the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) which had conceptualised the BBPS has decided to expand the scope and the coverage of the BBPS to bring education sector on board. According to a University Grants Commission (UGC) letter written to the vice-chancellors received by the universities in the two Telugu States, "The RBI has decided to include more categories (excluding prepaid recharges) of billers who raise recurring bills as eligible participants."

This includes educational institutions like universities, their affiliated colleges, schools boards and their affiliated institutions. Besides, State level boards like Board of Secondary Education, Board of Intermediate Education, Board of Technical Education at the State level. Speaking to The Hans India, a senior official from the Andhra Pradesh State Higher Education Department said that along with the universities, even State-level boards are facing difficulty regarding digital payment transactions.

He said that the educational institutions have recurring billings receivables in the forms of admission fee, tuition fee, semester fee, condonation fee, examination fee, entrance fee and the like.

In some cases, students and parents can be asked to use the "Mee Seva" or "E-Seva' services offered as part of the Citizen-2-Government(C2G). But, in many of the other cases like school fee, tuition fee collection, the institutions have to depend on one bank or the other digital platform for receiving recurring payments.

For this, the university or college has to enter into an agreement individually with each bank or digital platform, he added.

Clarifying on this a senior official from the NCPI, Delhi said, "The BBPS configuration will remove such difficulties educational institutions are facing to enter into multiple agreements with various digital platforms." The BBPS conceptualised by the RBI and driven by the NPCI offering integrated, accessible and interoperable recurring payment services to the customers.

For example, if a student or his parents are using Amazon Pay, Google Pay, PAYTM or online banking then they should have each one of those applications downloaded in their mobiles.

Also, the school and colleges should be an enabled biller by the digital platform.

The BBPS removes such difficulty. Because, it reflects across different digital payment platforms and other payment gateway services offered by the banks.

In turn, this becomes easy for educational institutions. "They have to enter into an agreement with only BBPS. Yet, they can receive their recurring bill payments from the students and parents from multiple digital platforms that they use," he added.