Booking railway tickets will be a tad easier and faster once a system of having an account with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) comes into being.
In a bid to make booking easier, the IRCTC has decided to launch a Rolling Deposit Scheme (RDS), under which anyone can deposit the desired amount in the account to be opened with the service provider.
The user could purchase tickets from the money deposited by using the RDS card as a novel payment option, which the IRCTC claims has advantages over the other modes of payment. The system would enable hassle-free and secured transactions, besides saving time by eliminating the payment approval sequence. It reduces the user’s dependence on banks and their servers and allows for booking tickets directly through the RDS mode. The other benefit is that the user need not make the payment gateway charges. The tedious process of using credit or debit cards for making online purchases is done away with under the proposed scheme.
One can open an account using the PAN card and operate the account through a transaction password and PIN number and manage the account online and top up the account too.
The minimum deposit is likely to be in the range of Rs. 1500 to 2000.
Registration fee
The account can be opened with a registration fee of Rs. 250, which can be redeemed while booking tickets later.
The IRCTC will provide facility for the user to track the transaction history and in case of cancellation of ticket, the refund would be deposited in the account the very following day.
The article has been corrected for an error.
Keywords: IRCTC, rail ticket reservation
Thanks for getting updated with technology, But 1) Railway Dept must create New Train Routes including Shortest Possible desitance Routes to Major Cities and Tourist Places. 2) Must Introduce many more Trains where Demand is More. 3) Dept must make sure safety is First. 4) It Must Introduce Low Cost Trains, so that expenses can be reduced. 5) Dept make use of Each and every data of Train Booking, so that Best services can be offered to travellors. 6) For many of the Trains Ticket booking is done for 120 days. If You just look at these charts you can come to konw that more no of trains must be introduced in all such routes.
Server must be upgraded by 4 folds in other words From 2G to 3G to 4G
Good move from IRCTC. Existing users can continue with old account or they have to open a new one??
Thru this newly introduced RDS, one can deposit money in IRCTC thru online, one day before you plan to book a tatkal/general ticket.We need not deposit money well before, ex., it can be from 1 day to 1 hr before, you book your ticket.
Let us hope that this step would reduce load on IRCTC site.
Many a times, money is deducted but the ticket is not booked.
Hopefully, this would help in reducing such problems.
The cancellation charges are too high for a common man. Hence, the same be reduced reasonably.
The processing speed of booking be speeded up as the website is very slow and taking lot of time for booking
The production of attested xerox copies of the photo ID cards be allowed instead of original to avoid missing of the originals during rush hours.
What IRCTC needs to concentrate on is trying to improve its traffic handling capacity.It should have been addressed long back. Once its done I guess it would make Railways more accessible.
Good move from IRCTC. Will they stop collecting the service charge?
One has to tread carefully here. It is understand that Railways in the reservation chart, posts
PAN details and the same are misused! Unless privacy of such details are protected, one
should be weary of registering with PAN.
It is nothing but to create an Interest free cash buffer for Railways.
Imagine a million people deposit 1500 rupees each (approximately).
Railways will become 1500 million rupee rich overnight - interest
free! It is better to keep your money in your bank earning interest.
There is nothing wrong in providing a small fee to your banker who
pays you interest and providing the gateway service. It is worth it to
pay to a bank, who has a branch and men near your home/office to
respond to your complaints and take corrective steps. Will railway
allow us to withdraw the money? Will they pay interest? How railway
will ensure that agents do not use this facility? In what way this
facility will increase the speed of IRTC website? Bank/gateway
processing takes the least amount of time while booking thru IRTC.
They also create multiple authentication and encryption to protect our
money before authorizing payments. How will IRTC will ensure this?
They too will end-up doing this only.
What is the rate of interest for the amount deposited in the RDS ??
How this will improve irctc servers response? It is not about payment,
if you do not reach to payment option then what is the need for this? If
you see most of the time we are not able to log in, see train details
etc. so first thins they have to do is to improve their system.
i think it is undoubtedly a positive step. hope it reduces the time
spent by a customer in the site thereby increasing efficiency in load
handling
IRCTC should STOP USING ADVERTISEMENTS that eat up so much traffic and slows down their whole website ten fold. It is true that Advertisements bring more revenue, but please consider the pain a user has to undergo to complete a transaction.
No use... how it will make difference. the servers on which IRCTC software works should be improved for faster facility. if thats done then automatically the payment gate ways will also work. This is a new way of generating revenue. they have learned from other online portrals like movie site's etc to generate revenue. For the passenger where is the benifit here.infact it only add cost to buy IRCTC Card. if you are not a frequent traveller your money will reside in IRCTC account and earni interest, how the consumer will benifit.
Good thing to be implemented but it will effect common man who depends on agents as now they will take more money...
those already havin debit/credit cards need to keep another dead
capital. Better thing is to speed up the servers - railway's or
banker's.
railways gains enormously by eliminating a lot of labour needed for
counter-booking. but they are not passing on the benefit to users. On
the other hand they are charging extra for on-line booking.
A bank or credit card transaction costs time. I believe IRCTC is cutting down this time, by offering to hold the money before transaction. Although, its a good idea, I believe IRCTC has to invest more in the IT technologies. If Amazon or paypal could handle millions of users, IRCTC should be able to.
Its a nice option to deposit the money upfront and then using it directly rather than waiting for a lot of time for the Payment gateway. But the problem is wat will be the Minimum Balance required to be maintained.
I have one doubt regarding this system. As such the traffic during
tatkal is so high on irctc servers, so wont this extra processing
increase the load and decrease the response time further?? Atleast when
u r making payment from bank. the traffic at bank site is very less and
their arent any delays and payment is made instantaneously. Can someone
clarify ??
IRCTC is notorious for not being able to handle heavy traffic to their site. Online payments are nothing "tedious" as such - there are thousands of other Indian vendors who use many gateways with ease. IRCTC has failed to take advantage of many technological advantages to provide decent service to its customers. This new system of depositing money is a feeble attempt at overcoming current hurdles. We will have to go through the additional hassle of maintaining a certain level of deposit with the IRCTC with this so called new initiative. For what? Does IRCTC pay interest? If not, why would I go through this extra step of first putting money in my IRCTC account, for which I will have to use the payment gateways anyway? It is time for this behemoth to kick out whoever provides its software and hardware backbone and get its act together. Whoever says we are an IT power of any kind needs to really wonder why IRCTC cannot make the simplest things work.
A good initiative by the irctc. I hope this will ease the elusive train
ticket booking via online a better experience.
I have IRCTC account from the day it started online ticketing services. Earlier IRCTC server responded faster, but as the user DB increased the response time to find the availability or sometimes logging in gets timed out.
Let IRCTC better refresh their server and introduce the so called RSD provision.Other wise this facility also would be of no help to public.
Bala
This is really a good news. Many a times, there were delays in the payment gateway, which led to booking failure.
But I wonder, what would railways do with that huge amount of money which is deposited upfront?
excellent scheme from IRCTC if they can handle the load at tatkal
timings,I think it should be RDS not as mentioned in article as RSD.
Really a good option!!! Only question is whether after the cancellation we can pull the amount back or it has be utilized for rail tickets only
When online booking through credit/debit card is the popular method, why customers should be asked deposit the amount in advance? Whether IRCTC would pay any interest for the deposit? Or preferential treatment for such booking?
The IRCTC server should be user friendly to make it more popular.
I dont know how this is going to affect the users. The site for IRCTC rarely opens on time and by the time we reach the page, all the tickets have either been booked by the agents(who then demand insane prices for them,knowing that the people have not resort but to buy from them)or there is a really annoying waiting list. IRCTC officials should primarily focus on stabilizing the website, say: increase the sites traffic handling capacity and stability.
Sounds Great!!! but can't believe IRCTC could be faster. Will wait & Watch.
That's a real good news...Hope they implement it ASAP.
The new step is welcome and in fact helpful since many of the travellers do no hold debit/credit cards and hence have to depend upon their friends or the agents for the facility. It will be more useful if this scheme is severely restricted to individuals only and ensure that no travel agent gets into the act.
What about users having account from overseas.
Is there a way to open an account without pan card?
I regularly use IRCTC for booking my train travel in India.
Thanks and regards,
Guna.
First IRCTC should make arrangement for proper booking facilities. No one can book a ticket when counter opens for tickets even 120 days prior to the travelling dates in major routes, forget about purchasing tickets for tatkal..
Trying to mincing money from people. This will only help peoples like the agents who will have to book tickets immediately.
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