Airtel Payments Bank has been seeing a gradual surge in business volumes in the financial year 2021. Airtel Payments Bank is looking towards achieving a break-even this fiscal year. There has been a rise in newer accounts being created and more transactions are taking place through the platform. There are also factors like growth in revenues and an expanded scale of operations along with a higher realization per user by cross-selling of products.
The pandemic has seen a lot of rural people move towards digital payment options as well. This significantly increased the traction towards digital payments, money transfers, insurance, direct benefit transfer credits, Aadhaar-enabled payment system, and collection management services.
An unnamed senior company official shared that Airtel Payments Bank is “confident” to break even this year. According to him, the company has reached the “right level of scale” due to its large user base. Airtel Payments Bank has built an adequate infrastructure, backed by investments in technology that serves its customers. All of this will help fix costs and keep a check incremental investments.
FY21 in numbers
The bank has a current user base of 5.5 crores. The official source noted that their losses have almost halved in Q4 of FY21, compared to the previous year’s Q4. The losses incurred in the entire FY21 were about Rs 420 crore. The Q4 losses were nearly Rs 70 crore. The company recorded over 32 percent growth in revenue. The total revenue for FY21 was at almost Rs 627 crore. A huge boost from the Rs 474 crore revenue in the previous fiscal year.
The outbreak of COVID paired with the inaccessibility of banks has given Airtel Payments Bank a huge boost in customers. The company has one of the largest retail networks consisting of over 5 lakh neighborhood banking points. Airtel Payments Banks saw a marked increase in the number of new accounts opening during the FY21 along with an increase in transactions too. Airtel Payments Bank serves one in six villages currently.
The banking company expects the momentum to continue into FY22, maybe even with an acceleration. In early 2021, Airtel Payments Bank gifted its customers a piece of great news. They announced an increased rate of interest of 6 percent per annum for savings accounts that had deposits of over Rs 1 lakh. Airtel Payments Bank also became the 1st payments bank to exercise an enhanced day-end savings limit of Rs 2 lakh. This was done in accordance with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines.
