Gurgaon, May 17, 2002: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), the life line of Gurgaon in an attempt to provide value added service to its existing customer base, has tied up with Billjunction Payments Limited, a network company of ICICI Venture, to facilitate online bill presentment and payment.

"We are happy to launch electronic bill payment facility for our esteemed customers. This is a significant initiative towards our strategy to offer value added services to our customers. Apart from the various payment centers that we already have, the primary reason to tie-up with www.billjunction.com is that we want to give our customers the freedom from the hassles of standing in the queues with stringent hours. Through this service, the customers can view and pay their bills online from the comfort of their home or office." says Mr. -------------, (Designation), BSNL.

Besides availing the facilities of making payment any time & anywhere, the customers can also view their BSNL bills at Billjunction.com. BSNL, currently in Gurgaon, has around 1,00,000 telephone customers, which includes around 2500 customers provided with wireless In Local Loop (WILL) connections.

"Serving our customers has been our primary concern. With the growing customer base, BSNL has takes this step to provide an online bill payment system over the Internet. Using this system the customers can use their existing bank account(s) to make bill payment, receive e-mail reminders & confirmations of their telephone bills and can schedule payments in advance. Besides this, they have the flexibility of Manual and Auto-pay, paying multiple bills at billjunction.com and can also archive their bills. Through the online bill payment facility we propose to speed-up the payment process to improve our cash flows and simplify the procedures," adds Mr. --------.

On the occasion Mr. Bikramjit Sen, COO, Billjunction Payments Ltd. said, "We see this initiative as a strong facilitator to residents of Gurgaon for routine and recurring BSNL telephone bill payments. The key value proposition of billjunction is that it does not require the customer to open a bank account in any specific bank to avail of the service. Supported by the RBI's Electronic Clearing Service (debit) facility (ECS), billjunction allows customers with a bank account with any bank, the convenience to pay on-line. The Manual Pay feature also provides a total control to the subscriber to authorize each and every individual payment."

To avail of this service, the BSNL customers will be required to register with Billjunction.com. Once registered, these subscribers will be notified about fresh BSNL bills through their e-mail. The subscribers can also view these details on the web-site. Subscribers can then make the payment online by logging onto www.billjunction.com and giving the payment instructions.

Verisign, one of the world's leading Certifying Authorities has certified the site, and it uses 128-bit encryption code, the maximum level of encryption possible on the Internet. The Secured Socket Layer (SSL) process ensures network level security and the encrypted URLs ensure application level security. This makes Billjunction.com the preferred channel for simple, practical and secured bill management, presentment and payment solutions.

For further press queries contact -