NEW DELHI: Railways leading government's cashless effort with nearly three-fourth of its reserved ticket earnings now coming from cashless sources and for the first time 8 percent earnings have come from cashless in unreserved category.
The number of people booking reserved tickets online using credit and debit cards or online transactions was at 58 percent in November but now it has reached over 75 percent. The total share of cashless ticketing – reserved and unreserved -- now stands at 53.79 percent while for freight bookings it is 95.86 percent.
“On date, 75.18 percent of our receipts from reserved passenger segment and 95.86 percent from freight business are facilitating less-cash economy,” said Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.
The government has announced several incentives to promote cashless economy and railway through its sub urban railway network is providing incentive by way of discount upto 0.5 percent to customers for monthly or seasonal tickets from January 1, 2017, if payment is made through digital means.
Railways has also asked State Bank of India to install 10,000 Point of Sale machines at various locations to allow transactions using debit/credit cards.
Nearly 80 lakh passengers use seasonal or monthly ticket on suburban railways, largely in cash, spending worth nearly Rs 2000 crore per year and government is expecting that as more and more passengers will shift to digital means the cash requirement may get reduced by Rs 1000 crore per year in near future.
Besides, all railway passengers buying online ticket are being given free accidental insurance cover of upto Rs 10 lakh. Nearly 14 lakh railway passengers are buying tickets everyday out of which 58 percent tickets are bought online through digital means.
“For paid services like catering, accommodation, retiring rooms being offered by railways through its affiliated entities/corporations to the passengers, it will provide a discount of 5 percent for payment of these services through digital means,” said a railway officer.