Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has launched a new online ticket deposit scheme which it predicts will cut the number of failed transactions by 20 per cent.
The new system will take deposits from passengers booking tickets online rather than taking the full payment for reserved seats.
Currently, e-tickets are booked by using cash cards or credit cards through an online banking process, but the system has been criticised over the number of failed transactions which have forced passengers to pay for their tickets twice.
“The launch of Rolling Deposit Scheme (RDS) will allow hassle-free e-ticket booking, in which the user will be able to book e-tickets against advance money kept with us,” an IRCTC official said.
During the April 2011 to March 2012, close to 110 million tickets were booked through IRCTC, out of which close to 10 million ticket payments were made but tickets were not booked due to incomplete transactions, including non-availability of lower berths, entry of wrong password, entry of wrong Personal Identification Number (PIN) by customer, insufficient balance and network failure.
In June 2012 alone, on an average 344,000 tickets were booked per day and close to three million transactions was not completed.
IRCTC is the nodal agency to provide online booking service for Indian Railways and is owned by Ministry of Railways.
