Bharti Airtel had applied for the licence through its wholly-owned subsidiary AMSL – said to be the first to launch mobile money service Airtel Money in India in 2011.
The subsidiary is the first of eleven firms to have received in-principle approval by the bank last August to provide such services. Others include Vodafone M-Pesa, Reliance Industries and Aditya Birla Nuvo and the Department of Posts.
"Airtel M Commerce Services Limited, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, has been granted payments bank licence from Reserve Bank of India on April 11, 2016," the company told the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The Payments Banks will be set up as a differentiated bank and will serve the purposes of demand deposits, remittance
