Juli Ann M. Sibi
UP Cebu Intern
The Prince Retail Group and RD Pawnshop yesterday signed up to provide bill payment services in partnership with Electronic Commerce Payments (EC Pay), Inc. and Gate Distribution Enterprise Inc.
Bill payments may now be made in 621 RD Pawnshop branches nationwide and 23 Prince outlets in the Visayas and Mindanao.
“Our main goal here is to give all Filipinos, especially Cebuanos, an easier way to pay bills be it electricity, water, online transactions, or even receive electronic load or cash with little to no service charge,” EC Pay president Jude Aguilar said yesterday.
He was here for the official contract signing with Prince Retail Group in the morning and with RD Pawnshop in the afternoon.
Aguilar said the partnership with Prince Retail will benefit those living outside Metro Cebu.
Prince has branches in Daanbantayan and Danao City in the north as well as in Argao, Dalaguete, and Minglanilla in the south.
“We have been vying to share our services outside city areas, as there are many people there who find it hard to pay bills, loans, and other services one can only find in the city,” added Aguilar.
Rissa Go, head of finance of Prince Retail, said the partnership will benefit their clients in Negros, Leyte, Samar and Mindanao provinces.
“With our partnership finalized, we are able to provide more customers with a one-stop shop, where aside from being able to buy all their daily needs, they can now pay their bills, phone, electricity, water, and buy load – everything in one go,” said Go.
She said Prince Retail Group will become more accessible as they will be expanding to four more locations, bringing to 28 its total store locations nationwide.
Ariel Adamos, corporate sales chief of Gate Distribution, said they want to make bill payment services more accessible to people.
“RD Pawnshop is one of the biggest pawnshops in the country. Because it can be found in many provincial areas, we are able to make many Filipinos’ lives so much easier,” Adamos said.
EC Pay and Gate Distribution’s main services allow Filipinos to pay for their bills in all of their locations.
Among the biller partners are telecommunication companies Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Co., Smart Telecommunications, Globe Telecom, Digitel Landline, Bayantel and Sun Cellular; utilities Visayan Electric Co. (VECO) and Metropolitan Cebu Water District (MCWD); and cable television companies Skycable, Cablelink, and Cignal.
They also accept payments for credit card bills from RCBC, BPI and Bankard; airline transactions with Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific, Tiger Air, and Skyjet; and government transactions such as passport applications and any transaction with the National Statistics Office.
Trisha Pascual, general manager for EC Pay and Gate Distribution, said they are planning to include tuition payments, hospital bills and remittances in their roster of services by the end of the year.