Online rail reservation sans creditcards!

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC) that provides web-based online booking for Indian Railways is exploring this option with new generation banks such as ICICI, HDFC, Centurion Bank, IDBI among others. Under this system, the customer would be able to give instructions to his bank to debit the money from the account after booking his ticket through the IRCTC website, www.irctc.co.in, the largest e-com site in Asia-Pacific region.

The facility would work initially with only new generation banks because they have the electronic banking facilities. At present, the railway reservation through Internet is restricted to credit card holders and currently 20,000 bookings are done in a day. Currently 2,25,000 people are using this facility, according to V Sreeram, Group General Manager, IRCTC. "The popularity of online train reservations is very much linked to the increase in credit card holders and Internet penetration. Online train reservations launched last August is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month," Sreeram added.

IRCTC would also start printing tickets from more centers other than New Delhi in order to reduce the time taken to deliver the tickets to the passengers. Since tickets are printed only in New Delhi, it may take two to three days to deliver the tickets by courier to up country destinations. IRTC would also start accepting Diners Club and Citi Bank apart from Master/Visa cards as of now.

IRTC web-based reservation facility was launched in August 2002 - the e-commerce suite is Broad Vision, backend support Center for Railway Information Systems that maintains the passenger reservation systems and payment gateway is supported by ICICI.



IRTC, a public sector undertaking fully owned by Ministry of Railways, also undertakes catering and hospitality services, special tour packages, development of budget hotels and promotion of domestic and international tourism.