Airtel starts India's first payments bank service, to pay 7.25% interest on deposits

Begins pilot in Rajasthan; customer's Airtel mobile number to be his or her bank account number

Airtel has launched India's first live payments bank on Wednesday, which would provide an interest of 7.25% per annum on deposits. 

Aimed at testing systems and processes ahead of a full-scale pan-Indian launch, Airtel Payments Bank has rolled out a pilot of its banking services in Rajasthan, a company statement said on Wednesday. Airtel Payments Bank is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel.

It informs that account can be opened with Aadhaar based paperless e-KYC, with no extra documents required and customer's Airtel mobile number would be his/her bank account number. The company intends to give an interest rate of 7.25% per annum on deposits in savings accounts. 

"Customers in towns and villages across Rajasthan will now be able to open bank accounts at Airtel retail outlets, which will also act as Airtel banking points and offer a range of basic, convenient banking services. Airtel Bank will commence the pilot with banking points at 10,000 Airtel retail outlets," the statement added.

It adds that extra benefits like money transfer to any bank account in India (Free money transfer from Airtel to Airtel numbers within Airtel Bank), personal accidental insurance of Rs 1 lakh with every savings account, easy deposit and withdrawal facility across a wide network of Airtel retail outlets, will be availed to the customers.

It also claims that the company will have a network of over 100,000 merchants (shops) across Rajasthan accepting digital payments from Airtel Payments Bank, offering customers the convenience of cashless purchase of goods/services using their bank accounts/ wallets, contributing to the government’s initiative of financial inclusion and banking for all.