i-Ticket services discontinued through IRCTC ticketing site

New Delhi: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the online railway-ticketing platform, has said that i-Ticket services through ticketing site has been discontinued. The services were discontinued with effect from March 01, 2018.

What is an i-Ticket?

An i-Ticket is a paper ticket bought through IRCTC website and is the same ticket as one can get from a railway reservation counter. Customers were requited to punch in all their details, journey information on the IRCTC website and the ticket was sent through courier at the customer's doorsteps.

What is the difference between i-Ticket and e-Ticket?

i-Ticket cannot be cancelled online. For doing so, customers would have to queue up at the railway reservation counter which the booking clerk would manually cancell.

An i-Ticket required booking at least 3 days before the journey date because of its physical delivery to the customer's address.

An e-Ticket, as the name suggests is an electronic ticket which is paperless. You can cancel the  e-Ticket online. If you carry an e-ticket, you will be required to show your photo card for your identity.

RailYatri, a web-based firm that provides various rail and bus based solutions, had said that fifty percent of train tickets in the country are still purchased in cash, owing to dependence on neighbourhood ticketing agents.

RailYatri had conducted the study among 50,000 travellers across 25 cities and consulted around 800 travel agents in September last year.

The study has found that even though 65 percent of rail passengers prefer digital payments while buying a ticket, 50 percent of the train tickets are still bought in cash, notwithstanding the central government's digital push. The study has shown that most travellers prefer going to a local agent because it "reduces complexity" and "helps in decision making".

It also found that the Payment Gateway (PG) charges at 0.7 percent (for train tickets priced less than Rs 2,000) was acting as a hurdle for travel agents. The typical PG charges vary between 1.5 to 2 peer cent depending on the provider, with most providers falling on the higher side. The study further stated that while the cost of train tickets have increased more than 80 percent in the last five years, the commission of travel agents have remained at Rs 20 to Rs 40 per ticket since many years.

With PTI Inputs