With the introduction of this facility, bidders can make payment online towards tender document fees and Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) and the government can make online refunds of EMD amount to the unsuccessful bidders’ bank accounts in a time-bound manner. This is aimed at enhancing transparency and ensuring complete confidentiality and anonymity in the government tendering process.

 The integration of e-payment system will replace the present, conventional system of payment of tender document fees and EMD through Demand Drafts.

 IT Department Principal Secretary P H Kurian said that one of the key features of online payment mechanism for e-procurement project was its payment mode. The bidders having account with SBT can now make online payments through SBT’s Internet banking facility. Bidders having account with other banks can also make payments through NEFT payment gateway of the SBT. For a bidder opting to make payment through the NEFT payment gateway, a pre-filled challan will be made available by the e-procurement system. The bidder with this pre-filled challan can make an online NEFT payment using Internet Banking facility of the bank in which he holds an account, by adding the account number in the challan as beneficiary.

 Alternately, if he does not have an Internet banking facility, he should take a print out of the pre-filled challan and can visit his bank branch and transfer money from his bank account. The bidder should exercise this option 48 hours before the closing of the bid.

 This feature of offline payment would be available only till December 2013. The other Inter-bank remittance channels such as RTGS and GRPT are not available for e-tender process. Another advantage of e-payment mechanism is that it facilitates online refund mechanism for unsuccessful bidders, straight into their accounts.

 The online payment for e-tendering and procurement also ensures faster and secure collection of amount by the government as the amount gets deposited automatically in a designated account, said C Jayasankar Prasad, director-KSITM.

 It further relieves department users from activities such as receipt of DD, its safe storage and remittance to government and no paper work will be needed from department users anymore, for remitting the amount from bidders to the government and back.