Within two days of going LIVE in Rajasthan, over 10,000 customers opened savings accounts with Airtel Payments Bank, according to Airtel. The customers mostly comprise of people from semi-urban and rural areas.
In Rajasthan, Airtel provides banking services through Airtel’s retail networks. There are around 10000 retail outlets that act as banking points. A two-third of these 10,000 retail stores are located in the rural areas. Besides, a network of merchants accepts digital payments via Airtel Bank using a mobile phone. The service provider doesn’t charge any processing fee from the merchants for this facility. According to Airtel, the network of merchants accepting Airtel payments will grow up to 100,000 by the end of this year.
Commenting on the success of Airtel Bank, 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,” he added.
Airtel Banks offer services like the savings account, cash deposit, and withdrawal facilities. People can also transfer money to any bank account in India. If the transfer is made within the Airtel Bank (from one Airtel Bank account to Another Airtel Bank account), then there is no transfer fee.
The opening of an account is totally based on e-KYC formalities, which means the customer needs to provide only his Aadhaar number for the purpose. Customer’s Airtel mobile number will be his/her bank account number. Non-Airtel customers can also avail this facility. They can visit the nearby Airtel outlet to open an account.
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.
