India: NRIs can now directly pay electricity, water bills for families back home

A recent move will help NRIs directly pay for utility bills in India.

According to the Times of India, the Reserve Bank of India has allowed Non-Resident Indians to undertake bill payments for their families back home using the Bharat Bill Payment System or BBPS.

“To facilitate Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) undertake utility, education and other bill payments on behalf of their families in India, it is proposed to enable BBPS to accept cross-border inward payments. This will also benefit payment of bills of any biller onboarded on the BBPS platform in an interoperable manner”, said the RBI’s Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies.

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RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das noted that the move would mostly benefit senior citizens in India whose children are NRIs.

Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), owned and run by NPCI Bharat BillPay Ltd (NBBL), currently has about 20,000 billers on its system. It offers an interoperable platform for standardised bill payments, and currently processes over 80 million transactions monthly.