Airtel to tie up with AP govt. for cashless services in villages

December 19, 2016 11:29 pm | Updated 11:29 pm IST - VIJAYAWADA:

Telecom major Bharti Airtel is most likely to ink a deal with Andhra Pradesh government to adopt a bunch of villages to provide 100 per cent cashless services. The model is expected to be extended to all villages in the State, according to a highly placed source in Airtel.

“The telecom company has been asked to adopt the villages to take the banking and cashless services to the next level,” the source said.

The development took place when Venkatesh Vijayraghavan, CEO Bharati Airtel AP and Telangana, met Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu at his camp office in Vijayawada.

When contacted, Mr. Vijayaraghavan, however, declined to comment on the development at this juncture.

“We have launched the Airtel Payments Bank in the State this week. The discussions went around the services that we can offer,” Mr. Vijayaraghavan said.

The telecom player has launched its Airtel Payments Bank four days ago. The Payments Bank offers 7.25 per cent interest per annum for the savings account deposits, Rs 1 lakh accident insurance and national talk time equivalent to the deposit amount in the bank.

“The response for the Payments Bank has been very good in Rajasthan where we ran the pilot. Over one lakh accounts have been opened within 10 days.

In this flexible mobile banking system, customer’s mobile number becomes the account number and it is readily linked to over three million merchants across the country to do transactions and purchases,” Mr. Vijayaraghavan claimed.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.