Airtel Bank opens 10K saving accounts within first two days

Within the first two days of launching its pilot program in Rajasthan, more than 10,000 customers have opened savings accounts with Airtel Payments Bank, says the company.

The payments bank, a subsidiary of the country's leading mobile phone operator Bharti Airtel, facilitates cashless purchases of goods and services through mobile phones.

The 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 which is available across 10,000 Airtel retail outlets in Rajasthan 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.

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.”

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.

For more details on Airtel Payments Bank, please read, Airtel launches India’s first payments Bank.