BENGALURU:Despite the strong push given to digital payments across the country, more than half of all train tickets in India continue to be purchased with cash, says an information portal on Railways.The neighbourhood ticketing agent is the main preferred source to buy tickets and agents prefer cash payment, it says.
A release from the portal, RailYatri.in, on Tuesday presented the findings based on a survey of over 750 travel agents and over 15,000 users across 25 cities.The survey reported that an estimated 65,000 ticketing agents are big suppliers of train tickets.
“Nearly a crore train tickets every month are being booked in cash and this doesn’t go well with the ambitious plan of the central government to move the nation towards digitisation and online payments. However, the good news is that this can be quickly fixed by revisiting the rules,” said Manish Rathi, CEO of the portal.
Despite agents running bigger businesses having the infrastructure to accept digital payments, their bookings are nearly 100 per cent in cash as they shun digital payments. “This is due to the outdated ticketing rules and the penalty imposed,” the release said.The release called upon the new leadership in Railways to incentivise agents in order to goad them to accept digital payments.