Government to continue bearing service charge on e-tickets, IRCTC to get Rs 120 crore

New Delhi: In a bid to encourage people to to book train tickets online, the government would continue to bear the service charges incurred by the railways on e-tickets. The finance ministry would pay the railways Rs 120 crore for 2018-19 to offset the losses due to waiver of service charge on tickets booked online, said reports.

The reimbursements to IRCTC, which was Rs 88 crore for 2017-18, will continue till it is allowed to charge for e-ticketing services. After demonetisation was announced in November 2016, the Union government has been pushing for digital transactions and reducing cost of online payments in almost every sector. The payment for tickets booked on IRCTC portal is set to become even more easier after Indian Railways integrated i-Pay app with it.

I-Pay is a payment gateway which has recently been granted PCI-DSS certification and would likely to be fully functional by August this year. While initially the directive was to not levy the charge till June 2017, the timeline has been revised multiple times and no service charge is levied till date. IRCTC used to charge 20 on each sleeper class and 40 on each air-conditioned class e-tickets. It also collected 80 for sleeper class and 120 on all other classes of i-tickets, said an ET report.