East African Bank Integrates REGIDESO Utility Payments with WSO2

Overview

A leading East African bank, known for its digital-first strategy, partnered with REGIDESO—the national electricity and water utility provider in Central Africa—to transform utility bill payments for millions of customers. The bank aimed to provide a seamless, real-time, and integrated payment experience that would eliminate manual processes, reduce service delays, and improve customer satisfaction.

To realize this vision, the bank partnered with Tellestia to design and implement a robust integration layer using WSO2 Micro Integrator. The result: a real-time utility payment ecosystem that connects REGIDESO’s back-end systems with the bank’s digital channels, enabling faster settlements, instant confirmations, and a significantly improved end-user experience.

The Challenge

Business Challenges

REGIDESO’s legacy systems could no longer keep pace with the growing demand and expectations from its diverse customer base. Key challenges included:

• Lack of Instant Payment Confirmation:
  Customers using mobile and online banking channels had no real-time confirmation for electricity and water bill payments. This caused confusion, especially among prepaid electricity users, who often experienced disconnection even after paying.
• Fragmented Billing Systems:
  REGIDESO operated separate billing environments for electricity and water. This complexity made it difficult for the bank to streamline payment journeys or consolidate reconciliation reports.
• Delayed Reconciliation:
  The bank’s reconciliation with REGIDESO was entirely manual and could take several days—adding operational overhead and delaying financial settlement.
• Unstructured Data Exchange:
  REGIDESO used a mix of CSV, XML, and flat file formats, requiring the bank to manually transform and normalize data before processing or reporting.
• No Real-Time Integration Layer:
  Payment files were exchanged using overnight batches with no real-time APIs. This restricted service visibility and created customer service challenges.

Technical Challenges

• Lack of Middleware at the Utility End:
  REGIDESO did not have an existing integration layer, meaning the bank had to absorb the complexity of enabling real-time processing.
• Data Format Inconsistencies:
  Handling multi-format messages from REGIDESO added complexity to data transformation and validation logic on the bank’s side.
• Scalability Concerns:
  Peak-period loads—especially around billing due dates—strained the systems, causing performance degradation.

The Objective

The bank set out to deliver:

• A real-time utility payment infrastructure that works across digital and branch channels.
• Secure and scalable APIs for seamless integration with REGIDESO’s systems.
• Faster reconciliation and reduced back-office load, enabling operational efficiency.
• Improved customer trust, with instant transaction status visibility and fewer disputes.

The Solution

Tellestia worked closely with the bank’s technology and operations teams to architect and implement a modern API-driven integration solution using WSO2 Micro Integrator (MI). The solution acted as the intermediary between the bank’s digital services and REGIDESO’s billing systems.

Key Solution Highlights:

The Impact

The implementation delivered significant value to the bank, its customers, and REGIDESO.

Additional Outcomes:

• Enhanced Customer Experience: Customers received instant confirmations, reducing service disruptions and increasing trust in the bank’s digital channels.
• Improved Liquidity Management: REGIDESO gained real-time insight into incoming payments, improving financial control and planning.
• Regulatory Readiness: The bank could confidently meet compliance needs with centralized logging and audit-ready integration flows.
• Scalable for Future Growth: The solution laid the foundation for onboarding additional utility partners, adding services, and expanding to other regional markets.