Exclusive: Airtel Retailers Are Unethically Opening Airtel Payment Banks Account In The Garb Of Mobile’s Aadhaar e-KYC!
This is a question of ethics, more than legality. This is about brutally destroying your customer’s trust, in order to romp up random numbers.
This is wrong, and this has to stop.
An Airtel user from Sirsa, Haryana has alleged that Airtel retailers are forcefully, without any consent, opening Airtel payment bank account in the garb of linking Aadhaar card with Airtel number.
We have just spoken with that person who put forward these allegations via Tweets, addressed to Airtel.
And here are the details.
The Airtel Way To Increase Payment Banks Customers?
Bhupesh Garg from Sirsa, Haryana was receiving a lot of notifications from Airtel, asking him to connect his Aadhaar with Airtel number.
Just like any law-abiding citizen, he went to the nearest Airtel retailer and provided his Aadhaar for eKYC. Along with his own number, he also provided his wife’s number and her Aadhaar details for completing the eKYC process.
Airtel’s Aadhar based verification of existing mobile number opens an Airtel payment bank by default. This is concern. pic.twitter.com/jRPm2BvZNg
— Bhupesh Garg (@bhupeshgarg) May 27, 2017
The trouble began when her wife’s Aadhaar was linked with her Airtel number. As soon as she provided her fingerprints for Aadhaar verification, she received an SMS stating that her Airtel payments bank account has been opened.
Bhupesh saw this message and confronted the Airtel retailer. As per Bhupesh, he specifically told the Airtel retailer that he doesn’t want any account with Airtel Payments Bank. All he needs to do is link his Aadhaar with Airtel mobile number.
When Bhupesh provided his own fingerprint for Aadhaar eKYC, the same thing happened: He received a new SMS from Airtel stating that his separate Airtel Payments Bank account has been opened.
Who Is Guilty Here: Airtel Or Airtel Retailer?
As per Bhupesh, the retailer took his and his wife’s phone in the pretext of linking their respective Airtel numbers with Aadhaar card.
However, within the Airtel app, there is an option to select if the user wants to open a new Airtel Payments bank account. It seems that either that option is selected to be yes by default, or that retailer deliberately selected that option, which opened a new Airtel Payment Bank, then and there.
When we spoke with Bhupesh, he was anguished over the fact that despite telling that Airtel retailer not to open Airtel Payments Bank account, he still opened it.
Bhupesh has already Tweeted this incident and tagged Airtel for help, but at the time of writing, there has been no response. He said that he will contact Airtel customer care very soon.
Airtel had opened 100,000+ Payments Bank accounts within 2 weeks of its launch.
Is this the way Airtel is ramping up numbers for their Payments Bank?
Will Airtel take any action and stop this practice? Are Airtel retailers being paid any incentives to open Payments Bank account?
We will keep you updated as we receive more details. Stay tuned!
Yes In Ahmedabad , It’s happened with my friends , His LPG subsidy automatically attached with Airtel Banking with out any permition when he attached his Adhar with Airtel telecome in Airtel customer care. I think Airtel Payments bank is definitely a scam bank .why it is involved LPG subsidy . Very same for Petroleum Minister for this.
The same thing happened with me too when I linked my no. With aadhar then immediately a SMS came that a airtel payments bank account has been opened. And also a message came that you will receive all your dbt’s(direct Benefit transfer) to this account. I mean what’s wrong with this company man .This is illegal. I also complained to them through email then and there but nothing happened. My suggestion is that if airtel doesn’t stop this immediately then airtel should be banned/closed in India.
The government is a fault first in not having a robust system. It is fundamental that the consent of the customer has to be obtained before an incident as pointed out in the case of Airtel has happened. while one can blame Airtel for having misused a gap available, what protective steps has the government taken in preventing such things from happening
Yes they are doing this in himachal also. It is big fraud and now gas subsidy alao going to these accounts
Is patrolium ministry also involve in this
am also a victim to Airtel payment bank,unknowingly opened an account,while linking Aadhar to Airtel sim.The subsidies were found credited in the a/c for the previous two months.On 11/10/2017 and 15/11/17 the Airtel payment bank had received the gas subsidy and not credited to the a/c but asked me to some of the nearest Airtel payment bank outlet to receive the subsidy amount.It is found very difficult to farthest places to seek the payment.I had requested the payment bank either to remove Aadhar particulars of to close the a/c.
The more worrying/horrifying problem is the looting of LPG subsidy. After linking, our LPG subsidy goes to this Airtel or jiomoney. There is no way to take this money in back in hand. You will be trapped in their bank. The reason is latest Aadhar linked account will be connected for all subsidies. What a strategy? Who is the brain behind this? How much money they can loot by this? billions?
No one has the right to change the bank account details that I provided to the LPG provider that too without proper consent. This should be transparent. The government seems least bothered about this issue so far. By then these looter will get billions.
Same thing is happening to my father for the past three months. Airtel and the government have joined hands in this corruption.
This is exactly what happen with my Father(not educated). He went to link aadhar number with his airtel mobile number on 21st September, and they have opened airtel payment bank account. Even they linked it with LPG DBT. The latest LPG subsidy he received in this airtel account and when we got SMS we come to know this cheating!
Bro,plz help me what to do in that case? How to resolve this? Same thing happened with my father exactly..LPG DBT has linked with airtel payment bank.. what to do for closing the airtel payment bank & again link lpg subsidy to bank account.. please guide me! Thanks..
We have experienced the same so please the authorities must close Airtel bank accounts otherwise millions of people will be cheated by Airtel bank so the authorities once again requested to delink all aadhar nos from Airtel bank accounts
Well, I finished my Aadhaar re-verification at Peninsula Corporate Park, Lower Parel, Mumbai. And it was exactly the same. I got OTP from 121, for Aadhaar Reverification, however on completion of biometrics, I got welcome message from Airtel Payments Bank! The access points are not informing the customers that opening Airtel Payment Bank Account is optional, and hence this practice is being continued. I sent an email to Department of Telecom, Governor of RBI, Registrar of Supreme Court, CEO of UIDAI, marking grievance officer designated ID of Airtel Payment Bank. But have seen limited response from Telecom minister office asking to resolve the complaint. Officials are either not understanding what practice is being followed even after writing a clear email, or it is a blessed arrangement.
OK this is really serious and ILLEGAL imo. Because, on 6th June 2017, I ported my Airtel mobile number to JIO. AND since then the LPG Gas subsidy transfer is not going into my Aadhar related bank account, which is Indian Bank, but it is now going to my Airtel telephone number instead of my bank acount.
Both the mobile number and the Indian Bank account are validated with Aadhar previously. But now in my ebharatgas.com account, it shows the following:
Aadhar linked with bank account: Yes
Aadhar linked with LPG distributor: Yes
BANK ACCOUNT STATUS: NOT APPLICABLE (why???)
>> LINKED BANK ACCOUNT: LINKED BANK ACCOUNT STATUS: AIRTEL PAYMENTS BANK LIMITED
(WHY? I never optd to have the above airtel bank as my banker and obviously not have it as my bank for Aadhar details) Airtel Payments bank is definitely a scam bank. Why is that private bank involved secretly in the top Central Government Scheme? Finance Minister should answer this…
IFSC Code: NOT APPLICABLE (Why? Scam??)
Bank Name: Not Applicable (Again, why? Is it to scam??)
Well, I don’t receive the subsidy amount into my Indian Bank account now. It goes to my mobile number (how can I cash it, or is it even a white money now considering the scam behind it?) I do believe that the FM of India must be knowing it. How can it be hidden from his department!!!?
Already losing my trust in this government….
Sorry to say.
This is blatant misuse of biometric information and must stop immediately. I would be happy to open an account if I was asked, not forced.
Hi, it has happened to me yesterday here in Bangalore. I linked aadhar number with my mobile with phone number at Airtel Whitefield store. Came home to check my mail and found Airtel has opened Airtel payment bank account without my knowledge. I gave my id for one purpose and they used it for some other purpose which is just not ethics but illegal as it is a breach of trust. When I reached Airtel customer service they asked me to ignore, then said it must be a promotion and they said this is the first time they are coming to know of such a problem. They are lying outrightly as I find that this issue is in media for more than 35 days.
airtel has been the biggest thief of all these , it does wierd things, the sim i am using as my permanent number has been in the name of someone else while loggin in on the airtel portal online. THIS MEANS TWO THINGS:
1. i have not provided any details for buying card or have used someone else’s details to buy the card(WHICH IS NOT THE CASE HERE). Which is not true as i gave my license way back in 2004 to get my sim. I was among a bunch of student who had to take sim for their new phones as we shifter to hostel for our grad college. So this was a mass scale operation at that time.
2. AIRTEL MISPLACED MY DOCUMENT AND NOW ITS SHOWING SOME RANDOM ONE FOR NO REASON AT ALL.
Now I just want to know if my card was not ssued on my documents then which card is ? It means airtel opened a sim on my ocument swhich i don’t even know. Just like i have someone else’s document base showing up for my card.
Note: this is my first number of my life and i still have the original packet. Apart from this i also converted my sim to 4g sim recently bu sending some sms after taking blank sim from gallery.
GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE AIRTEL WILL BE SHOWING ME IN FUTURE. JUST WAITING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE.
This is a practice being followed by all retailers in Punjab sector of Airtel I also spoke to a retailer to get info about the adhaar verification and he told to deposit 100 rupees and 50 rupees goes to Airtel and 50 remains in your account to be used , i immeditely knew they were opening paymeny banks without customer consent so I called Airtel customer care but they don’t have a number that will take you to operator the 121 no longer gives you an option to speak to the operator.. have not got the verification done so far for the same reason was about to write to Airtel for clarification