Railways gives green light to go cashless

Railways gives green light to go cashless

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways has asked the State Bank of India and ICICI Bank among others to provide around 15,000 point of sale (PoS) machines at reservation counters, with about a thousand of these machines to be made available by Dec 31, to make railway travel bookings digital. Currently, the Railways does not provide POS service for debit and credit card payments at its ticket counters.

“We have around 12,000 ticket counters. All of them would be equipped with one or more POS machines depending on the daily transactions. Managing cash is also a huge task for our staff. It would be beneficial for them as well if we could have enough swipe machines,” a senior rail board official said. In the first phase, counters at all urban centers would have the machines. “In places like Mumbai, where there’s a huge sale of monthly passes, we would have POS machines installed immediately. SBI has promised to provide 1,000 machines,” the official added.