In a bid to promote cashless transactions, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation has decided to leverage technology for further digitisation of its operations, especially its e-catering, e-ticketing and tourism segments.
The PSU of the Indian Railways had been vigorously involved in digitising financial transactions on various fronts like booking of train, flight tickets and monthly season tickets, a statement said here today. IRCTC Chairman and Managing Director AK Manocha said, ”India is fast transitioning to a cashless economy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest initiative to demonetise high value currencies will give an impetus to the process.
”We have already digitised a considerable segment of our operations in tune with the government’s flagship ‘Digital India’ programme. We are determined to push forward our passenger-friendly measures in a more aggressive manner by leveraging technology.” Moreover, its recently launched e-catering service, ‘Food on Track’, has been a huge success among rail passengers.
A major benefit of this service was that passengers could make payment for their meal orders online through their credit/debit cards as well as e-wallets like Mobikwik and Paytm.
Besides e-catering, a water vending machine would be installed at Sawantwadi Road station under its CSR initiative.
With the Centre pushing for a digital economy, IRCTC was making all out efforts for cashless transactions for the majority of Indian population which uses railway as its predominant mode of transport, the statement said.
IRCTC was the largest e-commerce website in Asia-Pacific with 15-18-million transactions a month and about 12-million visitors each month, with 15,000 being added every day on an average.