Keypad prepayment metering-the flexibility to cope with various tariffs and maintain customer service

The interest in prepayment metering technologies has grown throughout the world as electricity supply authorities search for more cost effective solutions to customer service demands while ensuring consistent revenue streams. This paper deals with some of these issues and more specifically attempts to address how complex tariffs, customer service and cost effectiveness can be combined using keypad-based prepayment meters. The credit transfer system using a keypad was the first prepayment meter effectively eliminating the use of a special token to transfer credit and changed the prepayment metering industry when it was launched by Spescom Electronics in the early 1990s.