IRCTC cashes in on eWallet scheme

During January and February 2014, IRCTC got total bookings of 1.23 crore and 1.16 Crore, respectively, through the E-Wallet scheme, whereas till March 26, 2014 a total booking of more than 1.32 crore had been made.

In its continuing efforts to make e-ticketing simpler and easier, IRCTC recently introduced another user-friendly scheme named eWallet. It is a Rolling Deposit Scheme wherein people have an account with IRCTC and deposit money to be used in future for booking e-tickets from the website. The scheme has received a great response from the IRCTC customers. During January and February 2014, there were total bookings of 1.23 crore and 1.16 Crore, respectively, through the eWallet scheme whereas till March 26, 2014 a total booking of more than 1.32 crore was already made through this scheme.

The average daily booking through eWallet has gone up to nearly 750 tickets, with an average daily fare of

5.07 lakh, from about 250 tickets and a daily total fare of

1.75 lakh, when the scheme was launched in midNovember 2013. Till March 26, 2014, nearly 19,000 tickets have been booked through this scheme, which surpasses the figures of January and February 2014 – 18,466 and 17,476 tickets, respectively.

Being very user-friendly and far more advantageous than the other payment modes in the e-ticketing system, more than 32,000 users have so far opted for the eWallet scheme. Earlier, one had to make the payment for the fare of the ticket, while booking an e- ticket, through credit card, debit card, netbanking, etc. In this process, the user is transferred to the bank’s server, from IRCTC’s server, for making the payment; and thereafter, he is once again taken back into the IRCTC site. This takes consid- erable time out of the total time for booking a ticket. There have been instances when user’s login, in the IRCTC site, expires during this process. Thus, money is deducted from his bank account but he fails to get the ticket. With this eWallet scheme, this eventuality is nullified. Since the customer’s money is already deposited with the IRCTC, he is not transferred to the Bank’s server for payment and precious time is saved.