After launching it in Rajasthan and few other states, Airtel is all set to launch its Payments Bank service in Delhi tomorrow. India’s Union Minister of Finance, Arun Jaitley, will inaugurate the new service along with Bharti Group Chairman, Sunil Bharti Mittal. 
If you are not aware, a Payments Bank service provides complete digital and paperless banking services such as opening account, cash deposit, withdrawal etc. One can easily open an account with Airtel Payments Bank via Aadhaar based e-KYC process and verify his credentials through biometric inputs or Iris scanner.
The telecom operator first launched the service in Rajasthan back in November 2016 with almost all the Airtel retail outlets in the area serving as Banking points offering basic banking services to customers. Airtel Payments Bank offer an interest rate of 7.25% per annum on saving accounts deposit. For comparison, banks such as Axis, ICICI, and HDFC offer 4 percent interest, while Yes Bank and Kotak offer 6 percent. Not only this, Airtel also claimed that various merchants across the entire area will accept digital payments from Airtels Payments Bank.
Apart from an impressive interest rate, every user opening a savings account in the bank will get personal accidental insurance of Rs 1 Lakh. On top of this, one would also get free Talk time for the amount deposited in his or her Airtel’s Bank account. In other words, every rupee you deposit into your Airtel Bank account will fetch you a rupee talk-time free.
The account number will be the same as one’s Airtel mobile number and one can deposit up to Rs 1,00,000 as of now. Other benefits include the ability to transfer money to any bank account, online transaction functionality, Debit/ATM card etc. Note that, this new Payments bank service will not entitle you to a Credit Card.
Going further back, Airtel first applied for the license in January 2016 and got the same on 11th Aril 2016. Of the 11 other companies which have got the license, Airtel is the first one to make the Payments Bank service live in India. Recently, Paytm also announced that it will be soon merging its wallet business to the upcoming Payments Bank service. Meanwhile, the company also denied the rumour of it closing its wallet service post-January 15th 2017.