EPF starts direct to bank account payments

Kathmandu, July 25

The Employee Provident Fund (EPF) has started automating the collateral based loan disbursement directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiary contributors from Thursday.

It will make the payment by using Nepal Clearing House Limited (NCHL)’s payment systems, namely NCHL-IPS and connectIPS e-Payment.

The first few transactions were made by Tulasi Prasad Gautam, Administrator of EPF in the presence of Neelesh Man Singh Pradhan, Chief Executive Officer of the NCHL and other high officials of EPF, NCHL and banks.

The EPF can now disburse the approved loan amount as per the loan scheme directly into the respective EPF contributor’s bank account maintained at any of the member banks and financial institutions (BFIs) of NCHL.

It has integrated its system with NCHL to automate all its payouts and collection transactions.

“The EPF will be extended for other payout products also and will soon be used for collections from the contributors as well,” said the EPF.

To avail the facility, the contributor should update their KYC related to beneficiary bank account details.

The contributor will no longer need to collect cheque and process at the bank for clearing and realisations. All payments up to Rs. 1 million will be credited on real-time basis through connectIPS e-Payment, whereas high value payments will be processed through NCHL-IPS system to be credited after the settlement on same day or maximum by the next day.

Over 2.5 lakh payments are made by the EPF every year. These payments are processed by issuing cheques. After the full implementation of new initiative, cheque based payments will be phased out with complete replacement by e-payments through bank accounts.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 26 July 2019.