Indian Railways, SBI tie-up to install 10000 POS machines at various locations

Indian Railways, SBI tie-up to install 10000 POS machines at various locations The Indian Railways on 13 December 2016 tied-up with the State Bank of India (SBI) to install at least 10000 Point of Sale (POS) machines using debit or credit cards at the Public Reservation System (PRS) counters of Railways.This tie-up was undertaken to promote Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to promote

cashless transactions. In the first phase, 40 POS will be installed on priority at A1, A and B category stations in the division.With this, passengers will be able to carry out cashless transactions while booking tickets. However, cash will also be accepted.  No extra fee will be charged from travellers, however, railways will pay 0.75 percent Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) through debit cards up to and above Rs 2000. This MDR will be 1.50 percent and 2.50 percent respectively for transactions through credit cards and foreign cards. Nagpur division of Central Railway installed around 15 POS machines in one go, out of which, 6 were installed in Nagpur, four in Ajni, two in Wardha and one each in Chandrapur, Sindhi and Ballarshah. In Eastern Railways, PRS counters from Bihar's Bhagalpur to the Bangladesh border will be covered, and all the unreserved ticketing system (UTS) counters will also be brought under the cashless system.

•  The West Central Railway (WCR) has already introduced PoS machines at four railway stations in Madhya Pradesh.

•  Southern Railway will install a total of 48 machines to give an option for travellers to make their advanced bookings through e-payment mode.

Background

This move came following the Railway Board meeting on 10 December 2016. In the meeting, the board directed all the zones to install POS.

SBI was given the responsibility to install 10000 POS machines at various PRS counters followed by Unreserved Ticketing Systems (UTS) at suburban stations, parcel and goods locations and other UTS locations.