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NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel has admitted to lapses in governance in its customer authentication process which led to the suspension of both the telco’s as well as its payments bank arm’s e-KYC licence by the Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI ) for alleged misuse.“As you know, we take great pride in being a strong customercentric brand that upholds the highest standards of governance. In this case we did not meet our high standards,” Bharti Airtel chief executive officer Gopal Vittal said in a letter to all employees dated December 25. The letter was reviewed by ET.Vittal regretted the situation that the company and Airtel Payments Bank found themselves in —one which eventually led to the departure of payments bank head Shashi Arora — and said it could have been handled better, if not avoided altogether.“First, we could have acted faster. If customers were inconvenienced, we knew. And we should have done something about it immediately. Second, we could have been far more responsive to the concerns of key government departments. Third, we could have shown urgency relating to the spirit of compliance even if we adhered to the letter behind compliance,” Vittal said.India’s largest telco and its payments bank arm — the first to be launched in the country this January — found themselves in crosshairs when the UIDAI mid-December temporarily barred them from conducting Aadhaar based verification using the e-KYC process.The authority imposed a fine of Rs 2.5 crore on the telecom operattor for opening payments bank accounts of its subscribers without their knowledge, violating the Aadhaar Act, 2016.While Bharti Airtel has been conditionally allowed to resume Aadhaar-based e-KYC verification of subscribers till January 10, the payments bank has received no relief.The controversy over e-KYC verification broke out after oil companies and the oil ministry claimed that Rs 167 crore of LPG subsidies had been deposited in the accounts of Airtel Payments Bank without the knowledge of customers, who were unaware that such accounts had been opened.While the telco has deposited Rs 2.5 crore as penalty with the authority, it has so far credited Rs 138 crore into the original DBT ( Direct Benefit Transfer ) accounts of some 55.63 lakh beneficiaries. The Airtel CEO said the earlier rules which automatically credited DBT to the last bank account linked with Aadhaar — in this case Airtel Payments Bank — have benefitted millions of unbanked Indians.But he added that it was entirely likely that many customers who opened a bank account with Airtel Payments Bank may have received a credit of DBT without being aware of it.“For those who were unaware,this has probably caused great inconvenience and confusion. We understand that many other banks have had similar instances,” Vittal said, adding that such “credit, lying unused in the accounts with no activity into the previous bank accounts of customers” have been reversed.While Vittal didn’t touch upon the specific errors on the part of Airtel, the company has previously said that after UIDAI brought the matter to its notice, it had put in a process wherein every customer had to give an explicit consent to open a bank account. “The express check within the app was also changed to opt-in mode,” it said.Vittal added that Airtel and the payments bank’s responsibility has grown manifold since it now functions as “a banking institution”, and asked all employees to take the lessons from the fiasco as a personal priority.Airtel Payments Bank was launched in January this year, offering basic banking services excluding loans and pays 7.25% interest on deposits — the highest among competitors such as Paytm Payments Bank, Fino Payments Bank and India Post Payments Bank.Since its launch, it has amassed over 50 million customers and has seen monthly transactions of almost Rs 3,000 crore. Kotak Mahindra owns 20% in Airtel Payments Bank.