RBI Expands Bill Categories In Bharat Bill Payment System

You should now be able to make recurring payments like insurance premiums over the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS). The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has expanded the scope of BBPS to include all categories of billers with recurring bills, except prepaid recharges.

Currently, the inter-operable bill payments platform covers bills of five segments- Direct to Home (DTH), Electricity, Gas, Telecom and Water. It enables users to pay these bills at a single location (either electronic or physical).

In a notification on Monday, RBI said that as announced earlier in the "Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies released with the Third Bimonthly Monetary Policy Statement 2019-20 of August 07, 2019, it has been decided to expand the scope and coverage of BBPS to include all categories of billers who raise recurring bills (except prepaid recharges) as eligible participants, on a voluntary basis."

"Apart from digitisation of cash-based bill payments, these segments would also benefit from the standardised bill payment experience for customers, centralised customer grievance redressal mechanism, prescribed customer convenience fee and the like," the 7 August press release had said in regard to expansion of BBPS' scope.

The BBPS platform allows customers to pay their bills using cash, cheques, debit card, credit card, internet banking and more. Bill aggregators and banks work as its operating units to allow inter-operability, irrespective of which unit has on-boarded the biller.