PROJECTS
Self-service and assisted service terminals for utility bill payment
- Enterprise
The use case
Despite the wide range of options to pay utility bills (electricity, gas, internet, phone, etc.), still, using the paper based bills at post offices is the most popular option in Hungary. Over 200 million utility bills are paid yearly by using the so called „Yellow Bills”.
Since a huge number of payments are done at the start of the months, this puts pressure on the offices of the Hungarian Post. Their goal was to widen the paper based bill payment options with self-service payment terminals, as well as assisted payment terminals in partner retail stores.
They required a solution which is highly scalable, and enables people without deep comuter usage experience to scan and pay multiple utility bills in one transaction.
The solution
Our company had been working with Flexsys Ltd. to develop a hardware-software solution which contains
- a robust Transaction Module, which communicates with all end-points to authenticate the data senders and collect data.
- an Administration Module to processing and settling transactions automatically and manually. Transaction data, bill details, scanned utility bill photos are accessible with appropriate authorization.
- a Communication Module which communicates internal settlements to the systems of the Hungarian Post, invoice issuers (electricity companies, internet providers, etc.), and the bank via standard interfaces..
- the system automatically creates service provider, commercial and banking analytics, manages remittances, and incoming fees and commissions of the clearinghouse.
- a customer service module enables complaint management in line with the needs of large companies.
- a monitoring panel to see all diagnostics regarding the endpoints, which are collected by sensors in the terminals (e.g. notification if printing paper runs low).
- local software on the terminals manages the scanning and payment process, communicating with the Reiner scanner (doing the OCR), the POS terminal (for payment), and the central system.
- local software for monitoring the terminal hardware as well as managing security to avoid fraudulent usage.



The result
As a complementing service to the online and mobile app payment of utility bills, the Hungarian Post placed over 120 terminals around the country in retail stores and shopping centers.