GWCL’s e-billing system to cover all telcos by August

Beginning next month, customers of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) can pay their water bills on all telecommunication network, as the company continues its bid to phase out paper bills and drive the electronic payment system.

Currently, customers of the company can only settle their bill via the MTN mobile money platform, a situation Mr. Maxwell Akosah-Kusi, a distribution engineer at the company said will change from August 1, 2017.

“By August 1, we will roll out all the other Telcos, so you can pay by mobile money, Visa, we will launch a customer app that will make it possible for customers to settle their bills through a lot of banks. That will help us bring in more revenue.

If we are billing so much, we should be able to collect and we can’t always be doing revenue mobilization where we have to go to the consumers’ premises and say you owe me so much. We have to bring in innovative ways through which people can pay their bills.

We hear people have the money, they want to pay but the time to go and queue up is a problem, we want to provide all these channels so they can pay,” he said.

He was optimistic that the new payment platforms will help the company collect one hundred percent of the amount of water sold to consumers.

Mr. Akosah-Kusi added that: “We want to collect 100 percent consistently and we believe that providing all these channels will help the company to get to the vision we have set for ourselves.”

GWCL, in April began the electronic-billing system in their bid to transition from paper bill delivery to electronic-billing through SMS and or Emails.

Already, SMS alerts have been sent to customers in the Greater Accra, Central, Ashanti and Western regions to validate their records.

The alert comes in the form of Customer Name, Customer Accounts Number, Customer Phone number and or email address.