Government of Kerala is delivering various e-Services through different channels like Departmental access points, and one-stop-shop citizen service centers like Akshaya/ FRIENDS, State Portal and other mobile channels like m-Gov. A full-fledged electronic delivery of products/services and Government services through the Internet is also being planned. To enable this, an Internet E-Commerce Payment Gateway is a critical infrastructural component to ensure that such transactions occur without any hitches and in total security over electronic networks. This component has multiple benefits, with critical ones being multiple payment options, secure transmission, multi currency settlements and rapid processing. The e-Payment Gateway will provide an operational component of the e-Governance infrastructure and a full e-Commerce facility that will allow secure online payments (e-Payments). The e-Payment Gateway will operate as a critical shared service within the e-Governance architecture along with the State Government eServices Portal.

The goal of the e-payment gateway project is to provide a mechanism to handle the online payment for services offered by the government of Kerala, which subsequently, will be made available to commercial entities in Kerala. The e-payment gateway is a key enabler to the successful delivery of public sector services online and once operational will increase the adoption of e-services due to its efficiency and ease-of-use. The e-Payment Gateway shall support Internet and other electronic channels including the mobile phone, IVR, Call Center, etc in future.

e-payment initiatives in Government Departments