Airtel Bank which is the first payments bank in India to go LIVE in Rajasthan. The company has stated that over 10,000 customers opened savings accounts with it, within the first two days of the pilot going LIVE in Rajasthan. 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.
The highlights of this bank is that it offers interest rate of 7.25% p.a. on savings accounts deposits, the highest in India and personal accident insurance of Rs 1 lac with each account.
In Rajasthan, Airtel Bank has rolled out pilot services across 10,000 Airtel retail outlets, which also acts as banking points. Two-thirds of these banking points across Rajasthan are in rural areas. 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.
Airtel Bank is a fully digital and paperless bank. Airtel Banking points will offer bank account opening services and cash deposit & withdrawal facilities.
Some of the first in industry features of Airtel Bank:
- 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 % p.a. on deposits in savings accounts which is the highest in India
- 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 Lac with every Savings Account
- Easy deposit and withdrawal facility across a wide network of Airtel retail outlets
Any customer, including non-Airtel customers can open a savings account with Airtel Bank by
visiting a designated Airtel retail outlet in his/her neighbourhood. No documents are required, only the customer’s. Aadhaar number is needed for opening an account. This is again one of the innovative feature of this bank.
As per RBI stipulation, the customers can deposit maximum Rs. one lakh in payments bank.
