Bharti Airtel is taking its attempts against Reliance Jio and the market leader, Vodafone Idea very seriously, and to ramp up its operations, the telecom operator is leaving no stone unturned. The Sunil Bharti Mittal led telco is leveraging every area in which it offers its services to try to gain the upper hand over other telcos. One such avenue is the Airtel Payments Bank. Airtel Payments Bank has also been delving its hands in POS and other payment solutions for the merchants, but in a new move, Airtel Payments Bank has launched ‘Atal Pension Yojana’ for its customers.
Atal Pension Yojana for Airtel Payments Bank Subscribers
By launching Atal Pension Yojana for its customers, Airtel Payments Bank has become the first bank in India to introduce the same for its customers. It is worth noting that Airtel Payments Bank account holders can subscribe to this scheme through a simple, secure and paperless process that will only take a few minutes. Airtel has also informed that Atal Pension Yojana will be available for its customers at 50,000 points of Airtel Digital Payments currently and then 100,000 banking points will be added to this network later.
It is also worth noting that the Atal Pension Yojana is a Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) administered scheme and this Government of India initiative has mainly been crafted to extend pension benefits to workers in the unorganised sector. Unlike the name would have you believe, this scheme will be available to the subscribers between the age of 18 and 40. It will offer minimum guaranteed monthly pension of between Rs 1,000 and Rs 5,000. This amount will depend on the customer’s contribution which starts at as low as Rs 42 per month. In addition to this, just like other pension schemes, the spouse of the subscriber will also get the pension after the death of the subscriber. Also, the nominee of the subscriber will get a corpus amount of 8.5 lakhs in case the spouse and subscriber both face demise.
Airtel Payments Bank Now in Partnership with PFRDA
Sharing his comments on this new development, Mr Anubrata Biswas, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Payments Bank, said, “We are committed to building a financially inclusive India, and are happy to partner with PFRDA to add Atal Pension Yojana to the suite of financial inclusion products offered through our banking platform. With our unique and vast distribution, we can extend the benefits of this scheme to the unorganized workforce in a simple, easy and transparent manner, enabling financial security for all.”
PFRDA in a statement said: “Established with the primary objective of financial inclusion, the payment banks are poised to make a significant contribution to deeply proliferate financial services among the population who are underserved by the banking network.”
Besides, this new pension scheme of the government, Airtel Payments has also partnered up with Bharti AXA to extend the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY) to its subscribers as well. The PMJJBY is a government-backed life insurance scheme aimed at increasing penetration of life insurance products among the underinsured masses and boosting financial inclusion.
