ISLAMABAD, Feb 4: The newly-introduced electronic bill payment service will ultimately benefit the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) customers.

This was stated by the minister for information technology and telecommunications, Awais Ahmed Leghari, while inaugurating the electronic bill payment service here on Tuesday.

The minister said: “the step is in the right direction and in line with the government policy to promote IT and e-commerce in the country.”

The service launched by the PTCL in collaboration with Askari Commercial Bank Limited (ACBL) by employing latest technology will provide new services to the public, he added.

The minister said the service would soon be extended to the entire country. It is time to do some work that can ensure quality services offered to the citizens, he added.

“As part of e-government initiatives, we are going to focus on service delivery to the citizens.”

He said the service was a small step in a series of many initiatives which should have been taken many months ago.

The service will facilitate the PTCL customers in paying monthly telephone bills through account transfer from the ACBL, ATM network using ACBL Debit/Prepaid Cards, which will be launched shortly.

The ACBL will provide this facility through more than 1,300 Point-of-Sale terminals, whereas internet payments can also be made from anywhere in the world through the ACBL’s website.

The federal minister asked the PTCL to be more innovative. He also raised a valid question that not all the PTCL users were ACBL account holders or use ATM machines.

Over 75 per cent of the users fall in this category, he added.

“This is the neglected segment that I am determined to focus on,” he said.

Mr Leghari said, with the onset of aggressive competition, these people would be the mainstay for any telecom company. Their migration to new operators will not be a trivial affair, he added.

Earlier, the PTCL chairman, Akhtar Ahmed Bajwa, said the company would soon be launching faster telephone bills channels through telephone prepaid cards. This facility is likely to start in June, he added.

“The ATM facility will soon be extended by including 150 ATMs of consortium banks in all the major cities. Through these initiatives 90 per cent of our customers will be benefited.”

The ACBL president, Kalimur Rehman, said the service was one of the most strategic value addition initiative of the bank as it would provide utility service to subscribers all across the country.

He said the ACBL was ready to launch the service on immediate basis using 21 ATMs in 10 cities, which would be enhanced to hundreds of ATMs linked through ‘1 Link’ within a month in all major cities of the country.