The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) plans to takeover utility fee collections for the government.
The Ministry of Innovation & Technology (MoIT) is to terminate their deal with Kifiya that has been delivering a one stop electronic billing system since 2010 for government services such as payment of electricity, water, telecom bills and traffic fines, and expected to end in July. Therefore, CBE plans to take over collection.
CBE has already secured a deal to collect the Ethiopian Electric Utility billing.
Last month, Bacha Gini, President of CBE and the manager of Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority also signed an agreement to collect water bills for its 550 thousand customers through any of the CBE transaction mechanisms.
A latest deal was also made at the beginning of this week where CBE signed an agreement with the Addis Ababa Traffic Management Agency to collect traffic fines through the bank’s modern digital channel.
Tesfaye Alemnew Communication Director of MOIT said ”nowadays there are a number of options to pay through technology.”
He added that Kifya is not efficient enough to address the increasing number of the customers where long lines were observed.
“CBE’s digitalized payment system reduces cash flow risks and modernizes its service delivery system to the customers in the country,” said Dereji Fufa, Banking sector vice president of CBE.
CBE has also started to collect payment of federal document authentication and registration through its product called CBE birr, in a bid towards creating a cashless society and creating convenience for customers.
CBE is delivering service for Ethio-telecom customers who have a CBE account to pay their bills in addition to other alternative that it introduced.
As of last year, the state bank reported 565.5 billion birr in assets and over half a trillion birr in deposits.