Harvest Housing Group, a housing association based in the North West, is testing an interactive TV bill-paying service from allpay.net. Tenants can pay their rent and other household charges through their Sky interactive digital television (iDTV).

Pressing the interactive button on the remote control brings up simple menu options to guide people towards the payment channel. Tenants are then asked to key in their unique reference number, before making a payment using their credit or debit cards.

We anticipate growing demand from our tenants for this and other iDTV services, especially with the forthcoming nationwide switch-over to digital television, said Paul Warburton, income and charge manager at Harvest.