Railways signal ATM booking

Railway passengers will soon be able to walk into any ATM and book a ticket. All they will need to board a train is a print-out from the mac...

Railway passengers will soon be able to walk into any ATM and book a ticket. All they will need to board a train is a print-out from the machine and a government-issued identity card. If the passenger is unable to travel because of a wait-listed ticket, the money is credited into his account automatically. The Railways is close to tying up with all nationalised banks along with institutionally promoted banks like ICICI, HDFC, UTI and IDBI Bank.

Senior officials claimed that if all goes well in about a year, the Railways will be in a position to increase booking centres by a whopping 15,000 plus compared to just about 2,000 passenger reservation terminals covering 300 locations at present.

The pilot project for introducing booking through ATMs is expected to be launched in the National Capital Region after July. The facility is likely to be available in about 900 ATMs in this phase initially for Rajdhanis and Shatabdis. The technology for this facility is already available with the Railways. “Our PRS server is linked to bank servers for internet booking in which payment is made through credit cards. It just has to be linked to ATM servers,” explained an official.

Banks will earn a small transaction fee on each ticket. The fee will start from a minimum of Rs 10 but it may be more for using private bank ATMs since the Railways will not have a direct tie-up with them. The ATMs of private banks will be accessible as they have tie-ups with other banks.