Airtel Payments Bank hoping to break-even in FY22
Airtel Payments Bank saw a rise in business volumes during FY21 when the lockdown restrictions were loosened. With people finally being able to move out of their villages you could see them make new accounts and transactions. With this, the company is finally looking to break even in this fiscal year. 
The hopeful factors which will be playing a big role to achieve this are growth in revenues, the expanded scale of operations, and higher realisation per user from cross-selling of the products.
The pandemic and the loosening of the lockdown restrictions saw the people wanting banking solutions closer to their homes and preferably one which didn’t allow them to move from their place. One such solution was digital banking, which Airtel Payments Bank’s main focus.
Since people also preferred the online transaction to the offline hand-to-hand cash exchange, the bank saw a rise in its product sales. Products like digital payments, money transfers, insurance, direct benefit transfer credits, Aadhar enabled payment systems, and collection management services saw a lot of attention by the people.
A senior official in the company said they were ‘’confident” of breaking even in this fiscal year after seeing the rise in the previous fiscal, due to their large user base.
Losses for the previous fiscal year were about Rs. 420 crore, while the Q4 losses stood at Rs. 70 crore. The company reported over a 32% growth in the FY21 so far with 627 crores over the 474 crores of the previous year.
Due to the lockdown restrictions, saw people in remote areas have difficulties in visiting their banks or the banks in their hometowns.
With Airtel Payments Bank, which has one of the largest retail networks of 500,000 neighbouring banking options, saw a rise in transactions due to its simple interface and its digital presence, they did not have to move around for their transactions instead they could do it at the comfort of their home.
With the complete digitalisation of the money increasing, the company expects even more growth than before.
Earlier this year, Airtel Payments Bank was the first to announce an increase in the interest rate on the savings account of 6%p.a with a deposit of Rs. 1 lakh in the savings account deposit. They were the first to implement the day-end savings limit as per the RBI guidelines. The interest rate currently is at 2.5% up to the deposit of Rs. 1 lakh.
