Bharti Airtel becomes first telecom operator to get RBI licence for mobile Wallet. This shows Bharti's commitment to become a lifestyle company from a pure telecom service provider.

 The company was granted the license to use the Semi Closed Wallet by the Reserve Bank of India in this quarter.

Semi Closed Wallet are prepaid payment instruments that are redeemable at a group of clearly identified merchant locations/ establishments which contract specifically with the issuer to accept the payment instrument. These instruments do not permit cash withdrawal or redemption by the holder.

This allows a customer to exchange physical cash for virtual money which can be stored on mobile phone to pay for goods/services for transaction value less than Rs 5,000. This will create mobile money / payments as a category in our country. It allows Airtel to offer a safe, secure, convenient & user friendly medium to our customers for making their payments.

"Currently we are evaluating various options that this license provides to find out how best we can create a value proposition for Airtel customers. It is imperative to design a safe & convenient deployment before we can take to the market. It is difficult to give an exact timeline for the launch at this stage," said a Bharti Spokesperson.