MUSCAT: More than 128,000 bills were paid by the smartphones application ‘Khedmah’ of the Oman Investment and Finance Company (OIFC) from the beginning of 2016 till 2017 end. These transactions were made for the payments of bills of electricity, water and telecommunications, across the Sultanate, except Dhofar. In the case of payments of communications bills, transactions were made for payment of bills of all mobile phone companies or recharging them. This shows that the statistical curve was upward in payments of bills through mobile phone application, which reached at its top in December 2017 when 20,000 bills were paid.
The application ‘Khedmah’ has got popularity since its experimental launch in mid 2016. The number of those who downloaded the application on their smartphones has reached to 82,000 by 2017 end. The statistical data shows that the largest number of people downloaded the application in October 2017. They downloaded and installed the new application in the case of Android phones from Google Play Store and in the case of an iOS device, from Apple Store. The number of those who downloaded the app was 8,000 during this month for payments of bills of electricity, water and telecommunications, recharging prepaid mobile services, in all governorates of the Sultanate.
Mohammed bin Saleh al Salhi (pictured), Senior Manager for Corporate Affairs of OIFC, said: “The smartphone application made payments of monthly instalments or bills very easy. The latest application reduces time and efforts required for the purpose. It enables customers to pay through this application from their homes or workplace by just one application. The single process is enough for payment of all bills anywhere in the country.”
“The application has the internal facility of bill payments of Public Authority of Electricity and Water, Muscat Electricity, Majan, Mazoon, in addition to mobile phones of all service providers like Omantel, Ooredoo, Hayyak and Renna for the payment of their post-paid services or pre-paid recharge. Now we have made an agent to do all this. Only a person has to do is to download the application, register his account on it, if he wants it to be supported for the payments of all these bills and automatically pay it each month without any further effort,” Al Salhi added.
He said that the company was continuously working to update the application and adding more organisations to it so that it has the facility for payments of bills of all organisations. This would increase the ambit of the users and make Khedmah a leading bill payment service.
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