Bharti Airtel has announced the pan-India launch of its mobile wallet service Airtel Money through its wholly owned subsidiary Airtel M Commerce Services Limited (AMSL). The announcement follows Airtel money's initial pilot in Gurgaon and the service launch in Chennai in May 2011, followed by Delhi in June 2011. Airtel claims that the service will be available in 7,000+ merchant outlets in 300 cities across India. Airtel Money is a semi-closed mobile wallet service which allows Airtel customers to pay utility bills, recharge their phones, shop at merchant outlets and make online transactions using their mobile phones. It also allows users to make instant money transfers between one Airtel money wallet to another and to bank accounts across the country. Airtel claims that Airtel money is India's first mobile based service to offer such instant money transfers. According to the data received by MediaNama via a Right to Information request filed with the Reserve Bank of India, Airtel Money was handling around 1665 transactions in April 2011, with the total transaction size being Rs 1,56,456, at an average of Rs 93.97 per transaction. However, it should be noted that the service was available only as pilot in Gurgaon during that period. Registration: Airtel mobile customers can sign up for the service by registering for an Express Account by dialling *400# from their mobile phones or walking into one of the 15,000 plus airtel money outlets across the top 300 cities of India and submitting the requisite KYC documents (2 photocopies…
