New Delhi/Jaipur, Nov 28 (IANS): Airtel Payments Bank said on Sunday that over 10,000 customers, mostly in semi-urban and rural areas, have opened savings accounts with it within two days of going live with a pilot project in Rajasthan.

"We are offering the highest interest rate on savings account deposits in the country along with personal insurance of Rs 1 lakh and may look at sweetening the value proposition further and introduce more benefits in the coming days to accelerate the onboarding," Airtel Payments Bank Chief Executive Shashi Arora said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Airtel Bank became the first payments bank in the country to go live with banking points at 10,000 Airtel retail outlets in Rajasthan. Two-thirds of these banking points are in rural areas.

The statement said Airtel Bank plans to have a network of 100,000 merchant shops across Rajasthan by the end of the year.

All these merchants will accept digital payments via Airtel Bank using a mobile phone, while will not charge any processing fee from merchants for this facility, it added.

Airtel Payments Bank is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel. The bank will offer interest rate of 7.25 per cent per annum on deposits in savings accounts.

On April 11, 2016, Airtel Payments Bank, which began operations in 2011 as Airtel M-Commerce Services, received a payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India. Kotak Mahindra Bank has acquired 19.90 percent stake in Airtel Payments Bank for around Rs 98.8 crore in February 2016.

The payment banks will cater to the needs of small savings accounts, remittance services, low income households, small businesses and other unorganised sector entities.

Airtel Payments' Bank's services can be accessed by Airtel customers on their mobile phones through the Airtel Money app.