A Desk To Process All Bills And Payments, Online

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Written by Vandana Sharma

Monday, 09 June 2008 00:00

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A Desk To Process All Bills And Payments, Online
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Here is an electronic payment platform that, the company claims, is the only one that integrates multiple payment and settlement options into one unified platform for processing transactions in real-time. No wonder firms from virtually every vertical are turning to this desk!

"Technology has enabled us to generate knowledge that leads to the discovery and exploitation of new business opportunities," John Kao wrote in his book Jamming: The Art & Discipline of Business Creativity. BillDesk, a unified platform that delivers and manages specialised electronic payments and remittance solutions for its clients, aims to do just that.

In 2000, the founders of BillDesk, M.N. Srinivasu, Ajay Kaushal and Karthik Ganapathy, colleagues at Arthur Andersen and alumni of IIM-A, IIM-L and IIM-B respectively, recognised the opportunities that rapid changes in the banking and payments sector would create for entrepreneurial initiatives. And thus BillDesk came into being. Its business model and the technological superiority of the applications that the platform offers have made it a winner in less than a decade.

Elaborating on the most innovative aspect of the platform, M.N. Srinivasu, co-founder and chairman, BillDesk, says, "The key aspect of any innovation is the utility and beneficial value that it renders to users and the eco-system. The unique advantage that the BillDesk platform offers to its clients is that it integrates multiple payment and settlement options into one unified platform."

"The option of the unified BillDesk platform essentially means that today, a company can offer to its customers the option of paying online using any Visa, MasterCard, Diners or American Express credit card, cash cards, or through any Internet banking account. Alternately, it offers its customers the option of having cyclical payments made automatically by electronic debit to any of bank/card accounts. BillDesk is the only unified platform in the country that offers this range of electronic payment collection options to any entity."

In the absence of the BillDesk platform, any entity seeking to offer electronic payments/collections services would have to integrate independently with each bank, each card settlement network, and each payment system. In addition, the company or service provider would have to, on a daily basis, deal with transactional operational workflows. Similarly, any bank seeking to offer comprehensive electronic payments services to its customers would have to, in the absence of the BillDesk platform, integrate independently with each billing entity across each of its channels, and deal with multiple entities on a daily basis for the transactional operational workflows.

To this Srinivasu adds,{quotes} "From a marketplace perspective, this has been one of the most significant innovations -- virtually a 'category-creator', as it enabled banks/entities to offer comprehensive electronic payment services to their customers." {/quotes} The defining aspects of the BillDesk platform have been interoperability and flexibility. This has allowed BillDesk to meet differing and evolving client needs, and yet retain a common services implementation. Importantly, this interoperability and flexibility is what has aided various players in their decision to offer electronic payments and remittance solutions to their customers.

BillDesk combines leading-edge technology with extensive domain expertise to offer payments and remittance management and transaction-processing solutions for both traditional and online businesses.

The shift

The era of online transactions has finally arrived-- and that too, in a big way! To BillDesk's advantage, more and more companies have begun to offer electronic transaction facilities to their customers and partners, taking advantage of the shift in the people's attitudes' especially those who have begun to enjoy the convenience of transacting electronically and over the Web. Whether it is in banking, telecom, insurance, utilities or financial services-- all firms are adding electronic payment and remittance options to their businesses, and offering it to their customers. And handling the processing and back-end operations for most is BillDesk, which operates as a neutral service bureau aggregating multiple banks, billing companies and other corporations onto a common standards-based platform for delivering electronic payments and collection services across multiple electronic channels.

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