Airtel Payments Bank opens over 1 lakh accounts in Tamil Nadu

NEW DELHI: 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.

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.

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 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.