Its service is now functional in all 29 states of India, adding that its 250,000 retail stores across the nation will serve as banking points. The company began testing its service in November 2016 in Rajasthan. Over 1 million customers joined the network during the pilot phase.
The payment bank is an initiative from the Indian government, first unveiled in 2014, which makes nearly every bank operation accessible from a smartphone.
Under this initiative, anyone can open a bank account using their Aadhaar based e-KYC information. Aadhaar is another initiative from the Indian government that ties all of people’s information with their fingerprint and iris-scan data.
Over one billion people in India have already enrolled themselves in the Aadhaar programme. Thanks to this, a person interested in opening an account with Airtel Payments Bank (or any other payments bank) won’t need paper documentation.
Airtel is offering an interest of 7.25% per annum on savings account deposits. Furthermore, there will be no processing fee for customers and merchants partners for digital transactions on the network.
Additionally, Airtel is offering Payments Bank users one minute of free talk time on its telecom network for every rupee deposited to their savings account. It is also offering free personal accidental insurance worth USD 1500 to all savings account holders.
Airtel Payments Bank is now available on Android and iOS. The company said customers would also get access to a MasterCard-powered online card to make payments across all online merchants accepting MasterCard.
Paytm, India’s largest mobile wallet service, recently received final approval from the RBI to launch its payments bank. The company expects to launch its payments bank next month.
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