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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
Airtel Payments Bank has reportedly removed nearly 1,000 retailers from its network chain for not following the correct procedure while signing up customers. Airtel has conducted an internal investigation to minimise such errors in the future. For the unaware, Airtel recently received a temporary eKYC license suspension for opening Airtel Payments Bank account of customers without their notice.
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People familiar with the matter told Economic Times that Airtel “levied a penalty of around 50 times the commission paid on several retailers who violated the guidelines for the first time, and removed repeat offenders from the network besides imposing a fine on them.”
Furthermore, Airtel also warned all the retail partners of strict action would be taken for any violation of the guidelines. During Airtel’s investigation, “it was observed that some of the retailers that were also acting as designated banking points had not informed customers about savings account opening and direct benefit transfer (DBT) receipts in an upfront manner. Wherever multiple violations have been found, relationships have been terminated,” said one of the people to the publication.
As of December, only 1,000 retailers were removed from the network, and the number may increase going forward. It is also revealed that Airtel and Airtel Payments Bank did not respond to the queries sent by ET. Earlier, UIDAI imposed a fine of Rs 2.5 crore on the payments bank, and it later allowed Bharti Airtel to resume Aadhaar-based e-KYC verification till January 10. It is unknown whether UIDAI will extend the license for Airtel or not.
