Airtel Payments Bank (“Airtel Bank”), the first payments bank in India to go LIVE, said that over 10,000 customers opened savings accounts with it, within the first two days of the pilot going LIVE in Rajasthan. Majority of these accounts have been opened by customers in semi-urban and rural areas, underlining the massive potential for growth of banking services in these areas.
Airtel Bank offers basic banking services to customers by leveraging Airtel’s vast retail network and taking basic banking services to the doorstep of customers vianeighbourhood Airtel retailers. In Rajasthan, Airtel Bank has rolled out pilot services across 10,000 Airtel retail outlets, which also acts as banking points. Two-thirds of these banking points across Rajasthan are in rural areas. Airtel Bank plans to have a network of 100,000 merchants (shops) across Rajasthan by the end of the year. All these merchants will accept digital payments via Airtel Bank using a mobile phone. Airtel will not charge any processing fee from merchants for this facility.
Shashi Arora, MD & CEO, Airtel Payments Bank said, “We are very encouraged with the response from customers, in particular, from semi-urban and rural areas. We believe that this differentiated banking model will offer a lot of convenience to customers and are hopeful of onboarding more and more customers in the coming days. We are offering the highest interest rate on savings account deposits in the country along with personal insurance of Rs 1 lakh and may look at sweetening the value proposition further and introduce more benefits in the coming days to accelerate the onboarding.”
Airtel Bank is a fully digital and paperless bank. Airtel Banking points will offer bank account opening services and cash deposit & withdrawal facilities.
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 access Airtel Bank’s services by dialing 8800688006. Customers can also visit any designated Airtel retail outlet to access services (and not just the outlet where they have opened the account).
