University Grants Commission (UGC) booster for Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS)

                UGC released a Circular on 9^th June 2020 advising all universities under its jurisdiction to onboard BBPS for collection of fees under various heads.

                The respective educational institutions can touch base with NPCI officials and MEITY officials mentioned in the Notification for smooth on-boarding to BBPS.

                As educational institutions take steps to onboard BBPS, the benefits will flow to all the participants in the chain.   

UGC - Brief Genesis:

In 1952, the Union Government decided that all cases pertaining to the allocation of grants-in-aid from public funds to the Central Universities and other Universities and Institutions of higher learning might be referred to the University Grants Commission.

Consequently, the University Grants Commission (UGC) was formally inaugurated by late Shri Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the then Minister of Education, Natural Resources and Scientific Research on 28 December 1953.

The UGC, however, was formally established only in November 1956 as a statutory body of the Government of India through an Act of Parliament for the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of university education in India.

BBPS is fast becoming the choice for recurring payments of Indians. Biller’s customers can pay via BBPS ‘Fetch and Pay’ mode or the ‘free’ mode.

Under ‘Fetch and Pay’, a bill must have generated against the customers identification number on the biller’s platform. The payment is made towards a particular bill only.

Under ‘free mode’, payment is made towards a customer’s identification number for further adjustments by the biller’s accounts department.

Either way, payment via BBPS reduces the recon activity by the biller.

Billers can choose either ‘Fetch and and Pay’, or ‘Free Mode’, or can choose both too. It all depends on the biller’s collection’s models.

The main challenges Educational institutions face in Digital Collections is the need to tie-up with individual banks or payment aggregators.

However, under BBPS educational institutions can tie-up only with one platform i.e BBPS and receive payments via multiple modes both Cash and Digital.

BBPS eliminates the need to tie up with multiple platforms, multiple recon modes, multiple queries.

In the long run, with complete BBPS integration educational institutions can replace POS machines with BBPS channel.

This article highlights the benefits of BBPS to educational institutions @ https://www.thehansindia.com/telangana/hyderabad-educational-institutions-brought-under-bharat-bill-pay-system-627912  

The complete UGC notification can be read @

https://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/1086673_digital-payment.pdf

          Educational Institutions typically collect the following types of fees:

01) Admission Fee

02)                Term Fee

03)                Special Fee

04)                Laboratory Fee

05)                Exam Fee

06)                Library Fee

07)                Mess Fee

08)                Etc

A combination of ‘Fetch and Pay’, and ‘Free Mode’, is best suited to educational fees.

As the model develops, the Scholarship fees can be integrated with BBPS channel and individual accounts created for each student in a Government App.

I will explore more of the above in future posts.    

          A real-time dashboard of BBPS transactions in educational institutions is the ultimate wish. This dashboard will act as a peer pressure for all educational institutions to move 100% of their fees collections to BBPS.

Colleges all over from India need to submit information on Digital Transactions regularly to UGC via a Google Doc @ https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScucdQSkoaA0_1XJGvBbnJc1VTE10xH6eZIRJKc4DR1KN1tIQ/viewform

This data will be beneficial to UGC to have a bird’s view of Digital Transactions in Higher Educations Institutions across India and formulate policies to boost Safe Digital Transactions in colleges.