The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is about to introduce a new concept, the Rolling Deposit Scheme (RDS), that will substantially reduce the time to book a train ticket online.
Under the RDS, travellers will have to deposit a sum of their choice in their IRCTC account and the ticket amount would be credited directly from there at the time of reservation. At present, the fares are paid through payment gateway, which directs the IRCTC users to websites of their bank.
“This is a time consuming process. Ideally, reservation of a ticket through IRCTC website takes two minutes and about one-and-half minute of it goes in making the payment. After the RDS, this one and a half minute time will be saved,” IRCTC spokesman Pradip Kundu told The Pioneer.
Payment through a gateway often leads to failed transaction where the money of the user gets blocked for a couple of days and scope of failed transaction will be nil if the RDS facility is used for making payments.
The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) also involved in developing this system and it is expected to be rolled out by early next year.
About 4.65 lakh tickets are booked through IRCTC’s website every day and it touched an all time high of 5.72 lakh tickets booking on a single day on September 2. The overall daily average booking was around 3.85 lakh last year 2012-13.
