Airtel Payments Bank rolls out pilot services in Karnataka

After Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Airtel Payments Bank today announcedroll out of its pilot services in Karnataka.
Airtel Payments Bank offers basic banking services to customers by leveraging Airtel's vast retail network and taking basic banking services to the doorstep of customers via neighborhood Airtel retailers.
Company officials said in Karnataka, Airtel Payments Bank is rolling out pilot services across 12,000 Airtel retailoutlets, which also acts as banking points.
70 per cent ofthese banking points are in rural areas, thereby driving financial inclusion and reaching unbanked and underbankedareas.
"It is a very paper less, digital technology lead bank that we are in the process of building.It is the simpler banking that we are bringing to our customers," Airtel Payments Bank MD & CEO Shashi Arora told reporters here.

Stating that RBI issued licences of payments bankswith an objective of financial inclusion, he said "there are over 223 million customers who are unbanked and it is our objective to get these set of customers intoto banking fold through Airtel Payments Bank."

Airtel Payments Bank Limited is the first among the payments bank in India to go live.
Surendran, Chief Executive Officer, Bharti Airtel (Karnataka), said, "we have about more than a lakh of recharge points in Karnataka out of which we have chosen 12,000 points to start with as a banking point, and based on the customer requirement and geographic consideration it is planned to take this to 20,000. "

The roll out in Karnataka follows the successful pilot roll out in Rajasthan, where Airtel claims that over 100,000 customers opened savings accounts in less than two weeks of commencement of services.The pilot services were rolled out in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana yesterday.
To enable the digital payments, Airtel Payments Bank plans to develop a nationwide merchant ecosystem of over 3 million partners that will include small kirana stores, small shops and restaurants and these merchant partners will accept digital payments for goods and services from PaymentsBank customers over mobile phones.
"We are looking at getting over 2,00,000 merchants in Karnataka," Arora said.

Company officals pointed out that the bank is offering interest rate of 7.25 per cent p.A. On deposits in savings accounts and there is personal accidental insurance of Rs one lakh with every savings account, among others.