Train ticket booking: IRCTC stops debit card payment option for several banks

Indian Railways online ticketing subsidiary Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation or IRCTC has been caught in a fight with six banks over convenience fees on transactions. IRCTC has blocked these banks from using its payment gateway for debit card payments, Financial Express reported.

IRCTC had stopped such banks from operating on the website as they were unwilling to share a half of the convenience fees earned on customer transactions, the report said.

IRCTC is the online ticketing platform for booking reserved seats on trains run by Indian Railways. IRCTC website presently allows card payments banks such as Indian Overseas Bank, Canara Bank, United Bank of India, Indian Bank, Central Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank.

After demonetisation, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the withdrawal of service tax on railway tickets booked through IRCTC website. The announcement was made during the Budget 2017 presentation in the Parliament.

Earlier, a tax of Rs 20 is levied on sleeper class tickets and Rs 40 on AC class tickets while transacting via IRCTC website.

"Every day we are losing 50,000 transactions. Normally, the merchant pays the acquiring bank. But, since IRCTC does not pay us, we were recovering our costs from customers and that is how it had been all these years," the report quoted an SBI official as saying.

RBI had earlier lowered MDR charges on payments made through debit cards to 0.25 per cent for payment up to Rs 1,000.

The MDR for debit card payments, including payments made to government, will be capped at 0.25 per cent for transactions up to Rs 1,000 and 0.5 per cent between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000, RBI had said.