The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has barred an unspecified number of banks from its payment section for debit cards, the Financial Express reported on Friday.
The newspaper said the Railways subsidiary made the decision because the banks were "unwilling" to share a part of the convenience fee on card transactions. After the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in November 2016, IRCTC had waived the convenience fee of Rs 20.
“Normally, the merchant pays the acquiring bank. But, since IRCTC does not pay us, we were recovering our costs from customers and that is how it had been all these years,” an unnamed State Bank of India official was quoted as saying in the report.
The website has restricted card payments to these seven banks alone — Indian Overseas Bank, Canara Bank, United Bank of India, Indian Bank, Central Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank.
The newspaper reported that earlier this year IRCTC asked banks to share with it half of the fee from card transactions, and that the Indian Banks' Association is "understood have been discussing the issue with IRCTC and the Indian Railways with a view to resolving the matter."