Airtel Payments Bank is right now India’s largest Payments Bank with 2.5 lakh outlets claimed on day 1.
Some of the biggest news related with Payments Bank have been created by Airtel: they beat Paytm in the race; opened 1,00,000 bank accounts in just two weeks and more.
But, there has been some bad press as well.
In one of our exclusives, we reported how Airtel is unethically, without informing the users, opening Payments Bank account.
Now, UIDAI, the statutory authority behind Aadhaar has taken notice of this, and have issued a notice to Airtel, asking some serious questions.
Heavy penalty and other fines are mentioned as per Aadhaar Act, if anyone is found to be unethically using Aadhaar.
It seems Airtel is in trouble now.
UIDAI To Airtel: Stop Unethical Usage of Aadhaar
The notice is pretty direct, and to the point.
UIDAI’s notice for Airtel states: “Airtel retailers are allegedly opening Airtel payments Bank account at the time of performing Aadhaar e-KYC verification without informing the purpose of e-KYC and also without taking informed consent of the customer”.
UIDAI has specifically stated that heavy penalties and restrictions can be imposed on Airtel, if the complaints are found to be true.
Airtel has defended themselves, as they said, “Airtel Payments Bank accounts are opened only after explicit consent from the customer. We will continue to educate retailers and strengthen our process to ensure transparency to customers and compliance with regulation..”
Airtel’s Unethical Actions Exposed!
This notice by UIDAI is infact, as a result of several complaints filed against Airtel, for misusing their Aadhaar verification privileges.
In May this year, we reported how retailers of Airtel, who were now authorized to open Payments Bank, had unethically opened bank accounts from Bhupesh Garg from Sirsa, and for his wife as well.
All Bhupesh did was to visit Airtel’s outlet in order to connect Aadhaar with their SIM card.
As soon as the fingerprints were taken for Aadhaar verification, the smart Airtel retailer opened their Airtel Payments Bank account as well, without taking any consent.
Bhupesh had also tweeted this case, and we took an exclusive interview to confirm this unethical behavior from Airtel.
It would be interesting, how UIDAI takes this case forward, and what can be the financial penalties imposed on Airtel, due to this unethical action..
We will keep you updated.