Indian Railways introduced smarter way to book tickets. Now you can book your rail tickets ANYWHERE ANYTIME through your Mobile Phones on your mobile web browser. No need to download any mobile applications or register with any 3rd party service. Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has officially launched a new mobile friendly portal (https://www.irctc.co.in/mobile) which will help to book railway tickets using one’s mobile phones having internet (GPRS/EDGE/3G/WIFI) connection.
IRCTC earlier offered mobile ticket booking through third-party mobile applications like ngpay, ATOM and Paymate. Current IRCTC mobile portal seems to be in beta stage, so we can accept more features to get added soon. IRCTC mobile portal features a simple user interface, once you login you will be greeted with three options to choose from Book ticket/enquiry (for online reservation), Booked history (tickets whose Date of Journey is due will be visible) and Cancelled tickets ( Cancel any of the tickets whose date of journey is due). Book ticket/enquiry provided with options standard to online website, you can choose the From and To station, choose a data, seating class and also an option to choose Quota. One of the main advantage is that we can book talkal tickets through this mobile portal.
After booking, the passengers will receive a reservation SMS with full details of the ticket including PNR, train no, date of journey and class. Passengers would not be required to take a print-out of the ticket, as you only need to show the reservation message of the confirmed ticket on their mobile during travel.
One of the Railway official said “This virtual message would be treated at par with the print-out of the e-ticket which at present is taken out by the passengers and is known as Electronic Reservation Slip ( ERS)“
IRCTC mobile portal helps you to easily get information of trains running between stations, seat availability, train route and fair charges. Payment currently accepted through Citi bank payment gateway and can use Credit card and Debit card issued from any bank. Hope IRCTC will add more Indian payment gateway solutions soon. The service charge is similar to e-tickets Rs 10 for Sleeper class and Rs 20 for other higher class.
As more Indian are getting smartphones and 3G is spreading on all major telecom circles, its perfect time by IRCTC to launch the mobile portal to tap this space. Do comment your views on it.
Link – IRCTC Mobile Portal