People booking train tickets using their debit cards — at ticket counters as well as through the IRCTC website — will find the tickets a tad cheaper.
The move follows the Department of Financial Services (DFS) instructing banks not to levy merchant discount rate or MDR —which is the commission charged by banks for using debit cards or net banking. This revenue was shared by the card issuing bank and platform like Amex, Visa, Mastercard or Rupay.
“Instructions to this effect has been issued to the Banks by Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, on February 26, 2018,” a release said. It did not state the date with effect from which banks will stop charging MDR. MDR charges will not be levied on passengers for booking railway tickets on payment made through debit cards for a transaction value up to ₹1 lakh, said the release. This will help in promoting digital and cashless transactions.
The Ministry of Railways had informed the Department of Expenditure that all proceeds from sale of tickets through IRCTC website/counters go to Consolidated Fund of India through Ministry of Railways and such transactions should be considered as Government receipts.
The benefits on Government transactions must be passed on to the public, and they should not face MDR charges while making payments to Government, it had said.
According to the RBI guidelines, for government transactions like train passenger tickets the MDR ranged from ₹5 (for up to ₹1000), ₹10 (for tickets ranging between ₹1001 and 2,000), and 0.5 per cent or a maximum of ₹250 (for tickets above ₹2,000).
In local language
In a related move, the Railways has initiated the facility of printing ticket details in local language on unreserved tickets issued through Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) with first such language being Kannada.
The facility was under testing at Mysuru, Bengaluru and Hubballi stations of South Western Railway with tickets being issued at these stations form one counter as trial since Thursday (March 1, 2018). It will be extended to all other stations of Karnataka from Friday (March 2).