It has been revealed that the digital transformation witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and which has favoured several platforms in Nigeria was as a result of the huge adoption of CWG Plc’s BillsnPay presentment platform during the same period, which recorded a transaction volume of over N12 billion in the first half of the year.
CWG’s Business Development Manager for Digital Financial Platforms, Mr. Tereigh Ozakpo, said the platform gained an edge during the Covid-19 lockdown, owing to the robust support model it had developed with its continuous innovative strategy.
“The growth witnessed in H1, 2020 is largely owed to two years of preparation for the adoption of digital payments by the semi-formal sector. CWG’s BillsnPay had spent some quality time in 2019 developing an excellent support model, which gave the platform an edge during the lockdown and going forward,” he emphasized.
Tereigh explained that BillsnPay, a bills presentment and payment platform designed to support the semi-formal sector by ‘formalizing’ the payments value chain, completed its testing of usage cases in 2019, stressing that the usage cases was to ascertain business viability – vending (bills and airtime), bills payment, bills presentment (invoicing), and aggregation.
Asked what the areas of the Nigerian economy the Billsnpay solution is targeted at, Tereigh stated that BillsnPay’s core business targets the semi-formal and informal sectors of the economy, stressing that the solution seeks to transform the ‘paper-based/bank-alert-based’ transactions validation system that is common in this segment to a proper digital receipt that can be tendered in a court of law; receipts that are downloadable and can be shared through simple digital channels like Whatsapp, iMessage, and other social media channels.
DigitalTimesNG understands that some of the payments that can be performed via the BilsnPay are estate levies, school fees, contributions, donations, faith-based payments and fundraising initiatives.
BillsnPay, according to Tereigh, makes these payments safe, transparent and provides convenient channels to the customers or users.
He added that the platform gives a guarantee to SMEs and startups to closely track and monitor their invoices and payments, leveraging the bill notification, intuitive dashboard and partial payment features on the platform.
In the past few months, BillsnPay has added some great value-adding features like Enhanced Quickpay feature, which allows SMEs and billers to send a quick bill reference to customers for quick payment without downloading the app yet, the receipt would be available for the user.
Other features that have been added include the Partial Payments feature, which gives the biller and payer the opportunity to pay in instalments and helps the billers to connect with their customers by providing flexible payment schedule.
There are also the Send Bill On-the-go feature, which makes sending bills as quickly as possible in four easy steps, and the Bill Notification feature, which regularly reminds customers to pay up outstanding bills in a frequency defined by the biller.
