Bharti Airtel plans to set-up at least 1lakh of its 15 lakh outlets across the country as payment gateways for subscribers if it gets a payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India.
While other mobile operators like Idea Cellular, Vodafone India and yet to launch Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJIO) have also applied for the licence, Bharti Airtel has already started identifying strategic locations of outlets across India for accepting payments and making remittances.
Moreover, by setting up nationwide payment banks, mobile operators are hoping their churn levels would come down as porting requests would lessen, said a top telecom industry official.
“We plan to offer the ease with which any of our 220 million subscribers can walk down to any of our outlets and deposit money in their account. It will any day be easier than normal banking which may be far off from the subscriber’s home,” explained a Bharti Airtel official.
While Bharti Airtel has tied up with Kotak Mahindra Bank for running its payment banks, RJIO has join hands with India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, while Aditya Birla Group’s Idea Cellular, the third-biggest cellular carrier, has teamed up with its top shareholder Aditya Birla Nuvo.