Airtel Payments Bank Limited, the banking arm of telecom major Airtel, has reported a 10 per cent increase in its loss at ₹272 crore during fiscal 2017-18 against ₹244 crore in the year-ago period.

However, the revenues at the payments bank, the first to go live in 2016, witnessed a sharp jump of 69 per cent at ₹160 crore for the year ending March 31, 2018. The bank’s revenues stood at ₹95 crore in the previous fiscal, as per the bank’s RoC filings. The financials were accessed on business intelligence platform, Tofler.

Since Payment Banks are not allowed to lend, they earn revenues from interest gained through deposits in government-approved securities and current and fixed deposits in conventional commercial banks. Airtel Payment Bank competes with players such as Paytm, Fino and IndiaPost. Besides, other sources of revenue come from transactional charges from customers on remittances and other third-party services that the bank offers.

The growth in revenues has come despite the fact that the New Delhi-based payments bank was barred by the Unique Indentification Authority of India (UIDAI) in December last year from using Aadhaar-based e-KYC, a faster and affordable wayto onboard new customers.

UIDAI had referred the matter to banking regulator RBI, which had then imposed a fine of ₹5 crore on Airtel’s payment bank for violating operating guidelines and KYC norms. The bank had also paid a fine of ₹2.5 crore to UIDAI for alleged violation of the terms of Aadhar (Authentication) Regulations 2016.

The bank has also been able to manage its expenses during the fiscal at ₹433 crore.

Airtel Payments Bank operates a network of more that 250,000 banking points (Airtel retail stores) across 29 States. In January this year, the bank committed to invest $440 million to develop a pan-India banking network and digital payments ecosystem.

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