Airtel Payments Bank rolls out pilot services in AP and Telangana

Extending its footprint to South India, Airtel Payments Bank is now rolling out pilot services in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. This follows its successful pilot roll out in Rajasthan, where over 100,000 customers opened savings accounts in less than two weeks of commencement of services.

In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Airtel Payments Bank is rolling out pilot services across 8,000 Airtel retail outlets in Andhra Pradesh and 7,000 outlets in Telangana, which will also act as banking points. Notably, 70 percent of these banking points are in rural areas, thereby driving financial inclusion and reaching under-banked areas.

Customers opening a savings account with Airtel Payments Bank will also get one minute of Airtel mobile talk time for every Rupee deposited. For e.g. if a customer opens an account with a deposit of Rs 500 then he/she will get 500 minutes of free talk time for calls to anywhere in India on his/her Airtel mobile number

Shashi Arora, MD & CEO – Airtel Payments Bank said, “We are pleased to rollout our pilot services in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and look forward to serving customers and contributing the financial inclusion vision of the two states. We have received an extremely positive response from customers in Rajasthan and would like to replicate the same in AP and Telangana before we rollout our services nationally.”

Airtel Payments Bank is a fully digital and paperless bank and customers can access services over their mobile phones, including all feature/basic mobile phones. Main highlights include:

• Digital Banking: Quick and paperless account opening using Aadhaar based e-KYC. This requires no documents at all, only the customer’s Aadhaar number is needed
• Customer’s Airtel mobile number will be his/her bank account number
• Interest rate of 7.25 percent p.a. on deposits in savings accounts
• Money transfer to any bank account in India (Free money transfer from Airtel to Airtel numbers within Airtel Payments Bank)
• Personal Accidental Insurance of Rs. 1 Lac with every Savings Account
• Easy deposit and withdrawal facility across a wide network of Airtel retail outlets

Airtel Payments Bank also plans to develop a nationwide merchant ecosystem of over 3 million partners that will include small kirana stores, small shops and restaurants etc. These merchant partners will accept digital payments for goods and services from Airtel Payments Bank customers over mobile phones.

Airtel Payments Bank will not charge any processing fee from merchants and this facility would be totally free for the customers as well as the merchants.

Airtel Payments 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 Voice Response Mechanism (IVR) by dialing 400. Both the USSD & IVR options are available in Telugu, Hindi and English language and work on simple feature phones as well.

Non-Airtel customers can access Airtel Payments Bank’s services by dialing 8800688006 or by using the Airtel Money app. Customers can also visit any designated Airtel retail outlet to access services (and not just the outlet where they have opened the account).