Paymentus Adds Digital Wallets, Instant Payments to Harris Utilities Platform

Cloud-based billing and payment platform Paymentus has announced an expansion of its 20-plus-year partnership with Harris Utility Group to add digital wallets and instant payment capabilities to Harris’ SilverBlaze customer engagement platform, according to a press release emailed to PYMNTS.

Integrating Paymentus Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and fully-hosted billing and payments solution with SilverBlaze will give utility providers the capabilities that customers expect from them, including eBilling, time-sensitive notifications, smart meter management, conservation and outage reporting, the release stated.

Research shows that customers expect their vendors to provide a digital wallet option and that “more than half (51%) of consumers surveyed indicated that they are likely to use a digital wallet to pay utilities and other monthly bills,” according to the release.

“Harris Utilities has established their reputation as unmitigated category leaders because of their keen focus on customer experience as the primary driver of consumer behavior,” said Paymentus Founder and CEO Dushyant Sharma in the release. “We share that same understanding and have built our omnichannel … platform to make it easy for every customer to understand, manage and ultimately pay their bills.”

Adding the Paymentus Instant Payment Network to the SilverBlaze Utility Customer Experience gives utility companies a modern way to interact with their customers across Amazon Alexa, the Amazon mobile shopping app and PayPal’s digital wallet. Paymentus also allows in-person bill payment at more than 4,000 Walmart stores in the U.S., the release stated.

“Whenever we solidify and enhance relationships between the utility service provider and the end customer and make information and the user experience more transparent and streamlined, everybody wins,” said Harris Utilities Group Executive Senior Vice President Jim Simak in the release.

In November, Sharma said Paymentus’ expanded relationship with J.P. Morgan was among the reasons its transaction pace jumped 45% in the past year. J.P. Morgan’s new Digital Bill Payment is powered by Paymentus as part of the collaboration.

Read more: Paymentus Credits New Relationships With JPMorgan, Others for 45% Surge in Business