(Borneo Post; October 15th, 2003)

KUCHING: The next step for Sarawak's Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) service is to develop a payment gateway for the State Treasury as well as corporations for business-to-business (B2B) transactions.

Once this is up and running., printing of cheques by the State Treasury would become a thing of the past, said State Secretary Datuk Amar Haji Abdul Aziz Husain, who is the chairman of SiliconNet Technologies Sdn Bhd (SNT) and the managing director of Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (SAINS).

He added that electronic payment instructions to financial institutions would be enough to make payments to the private sector and vice versa, and therefore, the challenge was to ensure that the electronic channel was very safe and secure.

"Such an environment no doubt will have to include elements relating to digital signatures, recognisable under the laws of the country. Apart from that, banks receiving electronic instructions must be assured that these instructions come from authenticated sources" he said before the signing of an agreement between SNT and May bank Bhd for the expansion of the EBPP service provided by the earlier to include the banks clientele.

This significant event was witnessed by Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr George Chan, who is also the chairman of the State Information Technology and Resources Council (SITRC) and SAINS. The signatories for SNT were Aziz and SNT managing director Teo Tien Hiong while Maybank was represented by its senior vice president Zulkifli Sulaiman and assistant vice president Amran Abdul Latif. SNT is a subsidiary of the State government that manages the internet portal, www.paybillsmalaysia.com, which offers the EBPP service such as online bill payment and electronic commerce.

Aziz said Sarawak was the first to operate an EBPP service in Malaysia when it was actually launched in April 2000 by Dr Chan, with the Sarawak Electricity Supply Corporation as the first biller and RHB Bank Bhd, which was then Bank Utama, as the financial institution to provide account direct debit payment facilities.

Since then, almost all public utilities in the State had come on board and by the end of this year, there would be over 40 billers on EBPP. "We have already seen the gradual increase in the utilisation of EBPP over the years and with the present initiative, we anticipate an even heavier utilisation. This is indeed very encouraging.

"Apart from that, in the very near future, we can also expect to see bills from other agencies including the statutory bodies," said Aziz.

Among the present billers are the Kuching Water Board, Sibu Water Board, Telekom Malaysia, TMNet, Kuching City North Hall, Kuching City South Hall, Sibu Municipal Council and the Bintulu Development Authority.

Maybank Group vice chairman Datuk Richard Ho said the signing ceremony yesterday would enable its customers in Sarawak to make bill payments to the local authorities through the EBPP.

He pointed out that Maybank fully understood the State government's vision and aspirations of their EBPP project to promote ICT to provide a better lifestyle for the people.

Through the EBPP, he said their customers would be able to make payments online to 18 payee corporations through SNT's EBPP website and he explained that this was done by linking Maybank2u's payment engine to paybillsmalaysia. com.

"We are pleased that the State government has selected Maybank2u. com to provide another alternative payment channel for customers for their bill payments" said Ho.