ePay unifies payments for municipal services and fees

Dubai's residents can now make online payments for public services at no additional cost, using the ePay facility on Dubai e-Government's payment gateway.

The service will benefit residents who previously had to pay a processing or user fee to make online payments for some government services.

ePay is a secure online payment method that allows registered users to pay for public utilities or fines using the eDirham card with the approval of the Ministry of Finance and Industry or a credit card.

Among the earliest departments to offer the ePay services were Dubai Municipality, Department of Health and Medical Services (DOHMS), Electronic Total Quality Management College (eTQM) and Dubai Development Board.

"ePay has been well received by the public. Dubai Municipality and DOHMS have reported that the number of customers using ePay for payment has seen a steady increase in recent months," said Salem Al Shair, director of e-Services, Dubai e-Government.

"The success has now prompted a number of other key departments to join the ePay network. In the coming months, most of the government departments will be offering the online payment facility through ePay. This will truly take us to the most advanced stage of e-governance, bringing us closer to the ultimate advantage of online services."

"Dubai e-Government has worked closely with banks, departments, Com-trust and the e-Dirham portal to ensure that the system is foolproof.

"All security concerns have been addressed to offer citizens a secure and user-friendly payment mode, using two different payment options; e-Dirham or credit cards.

"Currently, 60 per cent of online transactions are done using e-Dirham. Users have expressed satisfaction over the system and we are confident the number will increase dramatically as the advantages of ePay are realised by more departments as well as users."

Said Mahmoud Al Bastaki, e-Pay project manager in the Dubai e-Government: "For the participating government departments, ePay brings several benefits. It helps minimise running costs by automating the systems. It saves them the costs of maintaining their own online payment facilities.

"It unifies the business agreements with all the concerned financial institutions such as banks and payment service providers. It also saves the government departments the trouble of selecting payment application development vendors, as they can directly use an integrated payment application managed by Dubai e-Government."