Dainik Nation News Portal
Ministry of Railways has introduced Unreserved Mobile Ticketing with a view to promote three C’s- Cashless transactions (Digital payment), Contact less ticketing (no need to physically visit the point of sale) and Customer convenience and experience. As a big leap, booking of unreserved tickets on all non-suburban sections across all Zonal Railways has been made available from 1st November to enable seamless booking of unreserved tickets all over Indian Railways which will obviate the need for passengers to wait in queues for purchasing the tickets.
A pilot project for booking of unreserved tickets through mobile phone was commenced in December, 2014 on select stations on Central Railway to provide customers the convenience of booking of unreserved tickets without having to stand in queues.
Gradually, unreserved Mobile ticketing was extended to all suburban sections in metropolitan cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Secunderabad between 2015 and 2017 along with the facility of paperless ticketing. The facility of booking unreserved tickets, including season tickets and also platform tickets is available through the ‘UTSONMOBILE’ app available for Android, IOS and Windows phones.
The process of ticket booking involves downloading the application and registration by furnishing the requisite details. After successful registration, the user is given user-ID and password through which the user can log-in and book ticket through this application within the ticketing area and outside the Geo-fenced area (geofenced area is station premises and train route within which ticket cannot be booked. Ticketing area is outside the geofenced area as defined in the application). Initially, the payment could be made only through R-Wallet. Subsequently, the facility of making payment through all types of digital modes i.e. debit card, credit card, net-banking, UPI and other e-wallets has been introduced through payment aggregators viz. Paytm, Mobikwik and Freecharge, in line with Government’s directives to promote all digital modes of payments. The daily average number of passengers booking tickets through this app has increased from approximately 5400 in year 2015 to 4.70 lakh in October, 2018.
The UTSONMOBILE was also introduced on Non-Suburban sections in 2015 initially on Delhi-Palwal section of Northern Railway which was subsequently extended to other non-suburban sections of Northern, South Central, Southern, South Western, East Coast, South East Central and South Eastern Railways.
