Airtel rolls out India’s first Payments Bank; begin pilot services in Rajasthan

Airtel Payments Bank, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Limited on Wednesday rolled out a pilot of its banking services in Rajasthan. The pilot is aimed at testing systems and processes ahead of a full scale pan Indian launch. The banking services are rolled out across 10,000 Airtel retail outlets in Rajasthan.

Airtel Payments Bank has become the first payments bank in the country to go live. Customers in towns and villages across Rajasthan will now be able to open bank accounts at Airtel retail outlets, which will also act as Airtel banking points and offer a range of basic, convenient banking services such as cash deposit and withdrawal facilities.

Airtel Bank has started the pilot with banking points at 10,000 Airtel retail outlets, with a vision of expanding its merchant network in Rajasthan to 100,000 by the end of the year, giving a big boost to digital payments ecosystem.

Airtel Payments Bank offer a range of services, which are as follows:

• Anyone (non-Airtel customers also) with an Aadhaar card can open a Savings Account.
• Quick and paperless account opening using Aadhaar based e-KYC. This requires no documents at all, only the customer’s Aadhaar number is needed.
• Customer’s Airtel mobile number will be his/her bank account number.
• Interest rate of 7.25 % p.a. on deposits in savings accounts.
• Money transfer to any bank account in India (Free money transfer from Airtel to Airtel numbers within Airtel Bank).
• Personal Accidental Insurance of Rs 1 Lac with every Savings Account.
• Deposit and withdrawal facility across a network of Airtel retail outlets.
• Airtel Bank does not offer ATM/Debit Card facility, at present. Customers can deposit or withdraw cash at any of the designated Airtel retail outlets.

Airtel Bank’s services can be accessed by Airtel customers on their mobile phones through the Airtel Money app, through USSD by dialing *400#; or via a simple IVR by dialing 400. Both the USSD & IVR options are available in Hindi and English language and work on simple feature phones as well. Non-Airtel customers can also access Airtel Bank’s services by dialing 8800688006.

Airtel Payments Bank will play an important role in taking banking services to the last mile in a quick and efficient manner and benefit millions of unbanked citizens of this country. With this pilot, we have taken a big step towards the launch of our banking services and will be testing our operational readiness for full-scale launch across India.

– Shashi Arora, MD & CEO, Airtel Payments Bank.

Airtel Bank became the first entity in India to receive a payments bank license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 11th April, 2016.