The Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) has outsourced its bills collection task to G-Pay, said to be Africa’s foremost electricity utility payment coma collection company with over 13 million collection strength.
G-Pay has already set up in Port Harcourt, now on Olu Obasanjo Road, the city’s banking avenue, and would from Monday, February 8, 2016, open to PHED customers who want to pay bills with ease. The company also already collecting for Discos in Ibadan, Edo, Enugu, and many others while also networks with many banks to serve the likes GOtv, Smile, etc.
According to the chief executive officer of the indigenously engineered and modelled e-systems firm, Edward Olotu, payers would walk in and find a refreshing environment, sit in a cool parlour, sip water if necessary, and pay either through electronic systems or by cash. He called it a hybrid payment system but said the ultimate is to gradually lead all utility consumers to electronic platforms and enhance a cashless system.
PHED expects to collect payment from over 400,000 consumers in the Rivers, Cross River, Akwa ibom and Bayelsa (previously known as 4Power Company), and G-Pay is expected to lead in driving an easy payment mechanism that would encourage consumers to want to pay their bills so that funds could be made available to power the sector.
Olutu said he met 54 collection centres before but has increased it to 152, saying queues at the old electricity company’s payment centres had discouraged consumers from loving to pay their bills.
Now, he said, G-Pay would not only make paying utility bills easy and enjoyable but has also created e-payment platforms for companies that do not want cash dealings.
He admitted that security was a challenge but said insurance and nearness to banks would help reduce the risks. He said his firm was testing a model where people would pay bills with dignity.
The company also created Bills.ng to move consumers from e-payment experience to physical one so as to take everyone back to digital culture. He said the scheme would relieve the utility companies such as PHED to concentrate in their core business of providing power instead of running around collecting payment with expensive and inefficient mechanisms.
Confirming the relationship between PHED and G-Pay, the Corporate Affairs Manager, Jonah Iboma, represented by Sophilia Obire, said consumers had raised concerns over hassles in paying bills and this warranted the PHED to outsource the service to G-Pay and some other upcoming service-providers.
Speaking earlier, Chinedu Amah, CEO of Spark Media Limited, said the new way of payment had become obvious and that G-Pay has positioned itself as a foremost payment company in Africa. He described Olotu as a well-read and highly travelled Nigerian wizkid who had won CNN and Bill Gates awards in entrepreneurship and innovative works.
