E-Pay Punjab, the first-ever government payment aggregator for citizen facilitation and ease of business, has collected over Rs 500 million in tax revenue from multiple levies across Punjab in just 100 days.
This was informed in a progress review meeting presided by Punjab IT Board Chairman Azfar Manzoor on Wednesday. The system was launched on October 4 last year as a collaborative endeavour between Punjab Information Technology Board and Finance Department of Punjab which provides the general public a stress-free and efficient method of paying all taxes and payments to the government using ICT tools without going through the existing cumbersome process.
The meeting was informed that multiple new payment channels like debit/credit card, mobile wallets, Telco agent networks and direct debit from account were being added to further increase the payment options available to the citizens and businesses. Additionally, it was also planned to include Government to Public (G2P) and Government to Business (G2B) payment models in future to broaden the horizon of the program and following tax/non-tax receipts like online admission for colleges/schools fee, driving license fee, e-challan, character certificate, domicile, fitness certificate (commercial vehicles) and agri income tax.
The E-Pay Punjab application lets the citizens of Punjab generate a seventeen (17) digit unique PSID number that is accepted on all respective channels of all banks in Pakistan. The banking channels which the citizens can utilize for tax payments are internet/mobile banking, ATM and Over the Counter (OTC)/branch visits. At the backend E-Pay Punjab is integrated with State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and 1-link for interconnectivity across entire banking network in Pakistan.
