Digital payment for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) refill cylinders is catching up with customers. “It has gone up to 18% of our total transactions, which is an encouraging sign since it means less cash exchanges,” said an official source in Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) that has over 1.30 crore customers in the State.
During the same time last year, this figure stood at 5%. “We recently introduced many options, including e-wallets like Paytm and Amazon, which customers find convenient. With these modes, the payment is routed directly to the company and during delivery of the refills the customers would get a bill showing zero amount due,” he said.
QR code
Among all digital transactions, the online payment mode seems to be most popular and customers make the payment as soon as the booking is done. Customers have also been provided digital options to pay during delivery of the refills. They are going for scanning the QR code provided at the back of the delivery person's ID card.
A distributor said that after the introduction of the new IVRS number for booking, certain customers who had changed their mobile numbers faced problems.
“They would have used and discarded a number say two years ago and are using another number for the past year or so. When this customer books using the present number, the booking details goes to the previous number since it remains linked to the customer ID,” he said.
As far as retail fuel sales is concerned, dealers said they had seen a gradual increase in use of credit/debit cards and e-wallets. “Over 60% of transactions are happening through these modes, which is an advantage since we do not have to ensure safety of large amounts of cash,” said a dealer.
