Use Aadhar, biometric authentication for customer verification at Airtel Payments Bank, says CEO Shashi Arora

After having successfully run pilot programmes in Rajasthan, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Bharti Airtel officially launched 'Airtel Payments Bank' on Thursday here.

In an interview with ANI, Managing Director and CEO Airtel Payments Bank, Shashi Arora assured that people would not need to submit paper documents to get themselves registered.

"One of the biggest advantages of having this Bank is that the registration process doesn't require any documentation or paper work. People only need to share their Aadhar number for customer verification. Biometric verification will also be done," he said.

"The biggest advantage that comes with this bank is that people will be able to avail banking facilities at the nearby shops," Arora added, while stressing on availability of the banking facilities at one's doorstep.

He said that we have around 1.5 million shops through which customers get their prepaid cellphones recharged etc.

"We plan to make our banking facilities available to people through six lakh of these shops," Arora added.

Airtel Payments Bank has also taken measures to encourage cashless payments.

"We also want to encourage cashless payments through Airtel Payments Bank. There are around 10 million small shops in the country through which customers make digital payments to online merchants. Till now, we have activated more than one million of these shops to make payments through Airtel Payments Bank. In the near future, we plan to activate around five million of these shops," Arora said.

"Hence, not only will the customers be able to open savings accounts, and deposit and withdraw cash from these points, but also make digital payments," he added.

Notably, Airtel launched the first pilot programme of its payments bank at its 1,000 outlets in Rajasthan in November 2015. During this phase, more than one million customers were added.

Airtel Payments Bank is starting operations with 2.5 lakh outlets.

The company said it will be investing Rs. 3,000 crore to develop a pan-India banking network and digital payment ecosystem. Airtel is offering 7.25 percent interest per annum initially to attract customers, who can deposit up to Rs. one lakh in their accounts.

The telecom giant also plans to assign free personal accidental insurance of Rs. one lakh with every Savings Account and one minute of Airtel mobile talktime for every rupee deposited during account opening. There will be no charge on money transferred between Airtel to Airtel account.