Airtel Payments Bank, a joint venture between Bharti Airtel and Kotak Mahindra Bank, will spend Rs3,000 crore to develop a pan-India banking network and digital payments ecosystem. Formally launching the operations of the payments bank, Uday Kotak, vice chairman and MD of Kotak Mahindra Bank said Airtel Payments Bank, with its reach can offer banking facilities to the customers at a significantly low cost, which traditional banks cannot compete with. The bank will have a network of 250,000 Airtel retail stores across 29 states, which the company said was more than the total number of ATMs in the country. It will have 5 million merchants, of whom 1 million have already joined the bank’s network. The company also introduced an online card in collaboration with MasterCard for cashless payments. The bank is offering 7.25% interest on savings deposits and personal accidental insurance of Rs1 lakh with every savings account and free talktime equaling the amount deposited in the savings account. Finance minister Arun Jaitley, who presided over the launch, said the convergence between banking and technology was waiting to happen as excessive use of paper currency was a deterrent in any society. It is the currency, which has no names attached with it. The demonetization effort was to the extent that digital payment must replace paper currency, he added.
