Airtel Payments Bank to be launched today

New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is scheduled to launch Airtel's Payment Bank on Thursday, which has been running pilot services in four states.

Airtel has sent out media invites "for the launch of Airtel Payments Bank India's first payments bank by Arun Jaitley" for January 12.

Airtel first started its payments bank pilot in Rajasthan across 10,000 retail outlets on November 23, 2016, and later rolled out pilot services in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

On April 11, 2016, Airtel Bank became the first entity in India to receive a payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). It plans to expand payments bank service by leveraging Bharti Airtel's national distribution network of over 1.5 million retail outlets, with deep penetration in rural areas.

During pilot phase, Airtel Payments Bank announced interest rate of 7.25 percent on deposits, free money transfer from Airtel to Airtel numbers within Airtel Bank, money transfer to any bank account in India.

People can open their account using Aadhar based e-Know Your customer service without need for submitting any paper documents. For Airtel customers, account number will same as their mobile number.

Airtel Payments Bank achieved 10,000 customers mark within the first two days of the pilot going live in Rajasthan, the company said.

During pilot phase, Airtel also attracted its mobile customers to open payments bank accounts by offering them one minute of talk time on his/her Airtel mobile for every rupee deposited in the first tranche.