Takes banking services to the last mile and builds a rural ecosystem for digital payments to make villages less
reliant on cash
To contribute to the Government’s vision of Financial Inclusion and Digital India
Chennai, March 13, 2017: Airtel Payments Bank, India’s first payments bank, has enabled 100
villages across Tamil Nadu to go cashless as part of its endeavour to take its banking services deep into
rural/unbanked areas and contribute to financial inclusion in the country.
These villages now have access to basic banking services and the option of making digital payments, making them less
reliant on cash.
• Every village (with no previous access to formal banking) now has at least one Airtel Payment Bank outlet that
provides convenient banking services including cash deposits and withdrawals, and seamless money transfer
facility.
• Majority of the village households now have a savings account with Airtel Payments Bank and can bank/transact even
with basic feature phones.
• Merchants/shops in the village accept digital payments via mobile phones from Airtel Payments Bank customers.
• In addition, farmers/small artisans in the village have been trained to accept digital payments for their
produce/goods/services.
Residents of these villages no longer have to travel huge distances to access a bank and no longer need to keep
their money at home and worry about its safety. They are also able to earn a healthy interest rate on their savings
deposits. Most households in these villages have one or more family member working in cities/towns across the
country and they can now receive money transfers from family members/friends conveniently.
Shashi Arora, MD & CEO, Airtel Payments
Bank said, “We are delighted to have taken formal banking services to these remote rural pockets of
Tamil Nadu. We are fully committed to the vision of Digital India & financial inclusion. We shall further
leverage our strong rural retail network to enable digital banking services to the unbanked over their mobile phones
through this initiative”
Airtel Payments Bank, a fully digital and paperless bank, aims to take banking services to the doorstep of every
Indian by leveraging Airtel’s vast retail network with massive reach in rural pockets. Airtel Payments Bank
currently has a network of over 250,000 neighbourhood Airtel retail stores, which also function as banking points.
This is more than the total number of ATMs in the country. The Bank aims to scale its network to 600,000 banking
points across the country.
Till date, over 100,000 savings accounts have been opened with Airtel Payments Bank across Tamil Nadu. A network of
over 16,000 neighbourhood Airtel stores across the State act as banking points and offer basic banking services to
customers.
Airtel Payments Bank will not charge any processing fee from its customers and merchants partners for merchant
digital transactions, thereby encouraging them to adopt cashless payments. Airtel Payments Bank has committed an
investment of Rs. 3000 crore across its national operations and plans to build a digital payments ecosystem with
over 5 million merchants. Over one million merchants have already been onboarded across India.
Airtel payments Bank’s bouquet of innovative and convenient services 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.
• The customer’s mobile number will be his/her bank account number.
• Interest rate of 7.25 % p.a. on deposits in savings accounts, the highest in India.
• One minute of Airtel mobile talk-time for every Rupee deposited at the time of opening a savings account.
• Money transfer to any bank account in India (Free money transfer from Airtel-to-Airtel numbers
within Airtel Payments Bank).
• Free Personal Accidental Insurance of Rs. 1 Lac with every Savings Account.
• Easy deposit and withdrawal facility across a wide network of Airtel retail outlets.
• USSD and IVR in 12 languages for non-smartphone customers.
• An online debit card in partnership with MasterCard to enable payments on all ecommerce
websites
Airtel Payments Bank’s services can be accessed by customers on their feature phones as well through USSD by dialing
*400#; or via a simple IVR by dialing 400. Both the USSD & IVR options are available in 12 local languages.
Customers can also access services by dialing 8800688006 in addition to visits to any designated Airtel retail
outlet to access services (and not just the outlet where they have opened the account.