Broad examples of bill payments

Bill payments could be broadly classified into

• Payments with bills.

• Payments without bills but by validating the customer data.

• Quick payments with out validating customer information.

• Payments for subscription.

• Payments for invoices.

• Payments with standing instructions.

• Etc

To understand the above scenarios in detail we will take the first three cases with examples .

1. The scenarios where we have a bill the customer will want to see the bill and then make a decision to pay the bill . Example , fetching an electricity bill and then making the payment.Such scenarios are called “Fetch and Pay” type of bill payment . It is called “Fetch and Pay” because , first the bill is fetched and then the payment is made.

2. In scenarios where there is no bill but the biller wants to validate customer data , the customer will input customer data and make the payment. Example , a DTH payment where the payment is in advance and there is no bill .Such scenarios are called “Validate and Pay” type of bill payment . It is called “Validate and Pay” because , first the customer details are validated and then the payment is made.

3. If a customer wants to pay money quickly to a biller , one could use quick pay.

4. If Fetch and Validation is not supported , biller supports only QuickPay.

5. The above concepts relates a biller to a specific workflow of paying the bills.

One needs to understand about payment of bill amount in relation to the exactness of the bill amount .

• A biller which supports adhoc payment can accept any amount .

• Another parameter which should be considered is paymentAmountExactness .

• This parameter denotes how the biller collects the amount for a bill.

• If paymentAmountExactness is Exact will collect only exact amount

• If paymentAmountExactness is “Exact and above” biller will collect only an exact amount or more. In this scenario GUI should provide an option of editing the amount .

• If paymentAmountExactness is “Exact and below” biller will collect only an exact amount or less. In this scenario GUI should provide an option of editing the amount .

• If the biller support ad hoc mode of bill payment , the parameter paymentAmountExactness does not have an effect . The biller can take any amount of money.