As from November Shanghai residents can access an online bill present and payment portal for paying water, electricity and other expenses. The public of Shanghai can choose to keep paper bills for some time or choose to cancel paper bills to cut the waste.
480 million invoices
The benefits for the Shanghai municipality are clear. An online portal reduces a fast amount of the 40 million bills sent each month to the city eight million households: they receive on an average five bill per month. That is: 480 million invoices per year, in Shanghai alone.
Available public organisations
At present the following public organisations are connected to the platform:
- Shanghai Electric,
- Shanghai Telecom,
- Shanghai Unicom,
- City,
- North and South Water,
- Pudong Veolia Water, water,
- Pudong New Area and Nanhui tap, tap Minhang and Fengxian Water,
- Gas City and North,
- Pudong Dazhong Gas
- 13 other gas utilities,
And it is expected that Shanghai’s communications including Shanghai Mobile will join the platform early 2012.
Functionalities
In addition, the platform also provides residents with several options to pay bills: a single transfer, multiple bills at the same time, the monthly direct debit. There are also several other services like alert via e-mail and SMS. Bills are archived and can be queried nearly two years after receipt.
Finally the online portal will be used for various other types of electronic documents: credit card slips, insurance documents and property documents.
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