Airtel partners with Axis Bank to offer financial services to customers

Bharti Airtel has partnered with Axis Bank to roll out a range of financial offerings and digital services for its over 340 million customers. The financial offerings will include co-branded credit cards, pre-approved instant loans and buy now pay later services, the company said in a statement.

Under the collaboration, Axis Bank will also use cyber security services from Airtel and both the partners will also work for cloud and data centre services.

The partnership was kicked-off with the launch of the ‘Airtel Axis Bank Credit Card’, which has features such as cash backs, special discounts, digital vouchers and complimentary services to Airtel customers. 

With this tie-up, the Airtel customers will now be able to avail exclusive benefits from Axis Bank, while the bank will benefit from telecom giant’s strong digital capabilities, said Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel.

Axis Bank claims that the alliance will help it to penetrate tier 2 and tier 3 markets by enabling higher adoption of digitised payments.

Amitabh Chaudhry, MD & CEO, Axis Bank, said, “We will harness Airtel's network and services across mobility, DTH and utility bill payments to offer the opportunity to our customers to maximize value, while also driving the digital economy exponentially.”

The partnership comes at a time when mobile wallets and digital payment apps have been surpassing credit card usage and are on course to replace the traditional payment methods. A FIS report recently claimed that digital wallets were leading e-commerce payment methods in 2021 with 45.4% usage, followed by debit cards (14.6%) and credit/charge cards (13.3%). Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL), which is becoming India’s fastest-growing online payment method is projected to rise to 8.6% of e-commerce market value by 2025, up from just 3% in 2021, as per the FIS.