e-seva the iTunes of bill payment

Apple has a history of not to go with anything that has to do with streaming. Looks like Apple doesn’t believe in streaming. It has 3 technologies out there, which prove this point.

1. Music – You need iTunes to download music on to your computer and then later put it on your iPod.
2. Movies – You still need iTunes and then you can put it on your iTv and watch it on your TV
3. Communications – You still need iTunes and then you can put stuff on your iPhone

So, it clearly shows how Apple deals with media. And there is a reason why Apple chose that way, it works. Period. This central place (iTunes) to manage all the media is the principle behind Apple’s way of doing things.

Lately, I came across similar principle here in India while paying our bills. In India (at least in AP, I am not sure of other states) you can pay your electricity, water and telephone bills through a service called “e-seva”, which literally means “electronic service”. It’s nothing but a wide set of offices dispersed throughout the city – and you can take your bills there to make a payment. Kinda like one place to pay off your bills. Just like iTunes.

I was wondering why didn’t the people who designed e-seva put the whole thing out there for normal people to access? Why can’t I go to the e-seva site and pay off my bills online? Couple of reasons come to mind –

1. Internet penetration is not that dense
2. Online payment requires, some sort of bank a/c or credit card – which is just picking up in India. India is still a largely cash based payment country.
3. Language could be a barrier. A lot of people don’t read or write English which is most of the Internet is made up of.

But for now the e-seva system works fine. May be once all the above issues are resolved then may be I can make auto-payments of my electricity, water and telephone bills online as I used to do in US. May be once we all get 100MB pipelines to internet, Apple will offer iTunes’ online version which basically streams movies, audio etc. Till then e-seva and iTunes are just fine and work.

Author: akbar

Ramblings on Ideas, Creativity, Technology, and Spirituality. View all posts by akbar