Indian Railways joins cashless party, offers incentives for digital payments

With the Cashless India movement, India is looking to soon become a completely digitised economy. In fact, cash payment has now become an outdated payment method with the emergence of digital or cashless payment options.

Read More: Digital payment - Five reasons why you should go cashless and opt for digital transactions

While the Government of India is looking to embed cashless transactions in every sector possible, the Indian Railways has joined the party, introducing the option of using debit and credit cards to pay penalties and any other additional fares.

Not just that, railway authorities have also decided to roll out incentives to passengers if they make online transactions to purchase tickets and passes. Currently, a discount of 0.5 percent is being given to users on the purchase of a monthly pass through a debit card or credit card.

Mohd Jamshed, member-traffic, Rail Board, talking to the Economic Times said:

"We are trying to minimise the use of cash as much as possible. So, several incentives are being rolled out for passengers. The financial burden of the incentives given is being borne by us. Earlier, most of our cashless transactions were through IRCTC. Though that is still the case, we have also started accepting cards and BHIM at unreserved ticket counters. Railways is benefiting from it as we are reducing the cost of handling cash."

According to a Times Now report, Indian Railways has an objective to go cashless for 85 percent to 90 percent of the total payments. The largest employer in India earns Rs 48,000 crore a year from passenger revenue, and 95 percent of its transactions in the freight segment are cashless.

Read More: Indian railways to install PoS machines at unreserved ticketing system counters

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