Airtel Payments Bank opens over 10k savings accounts within first two days

Airtel Payments Bank has announced 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 via neighbourhood 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.”

Any customer, including non-Airtel customers can open a savings account with Airtel Bank by visiting a designated Airtel retail outlet in his/her neighbourhood. No documents are required, only the customer’s. Aadhaar number is needed for opening an account. The account will be opened through a paperless process within minutes through Aadhaar based e-KYC authentication.

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).