You may soon avail incentives on your train tickets booked online

In a move to further push digital payments, Indian Railways may soon offer incentives to passengers who book their tickets online.
 
"We are trying to minimise the use of cash as much as possible. So, several incentives are being rolled out for passengers," a report by Economic Times quoted Mohd Jamshed, member-traffic, Rail Board, as saying.
 
He was further quoted as, "The financial burden of the incentives given is being borne by us.”
 
The Indian Railways is reportedly losing Rs 400 crore a year for waiving service charges on tickets purchased via Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) portal.
 
The Ministry is already offering 0.5%V discount on purchase of monthly travel pass, on payments made through debit and credit card, the report said.
 
Further, 60% of total transaction made in passenger segment were cashless, which has reportedly risen over 20% after the demonetisation drive.
 
The ET report said the government now target to go cashless for 85-90% of total payment, adding that from November 2017, the Indian Railways had already made two changes in regards to train tickets booking online.
 
In a notification, IRCTC on November 03, said that now users are allowed to book up to 12 tickets in a month, if users get themselves verified through their Aadhaar number along with at least one passenger also being verified through Aadhaar.
 
However, no Aadhaar identification will be needed for booking up to six tickets in a month.
 
On a yearly basis, the railways earn somewhat Rs 48,000 crore from passenger revenues, of which about 95% transactions are involved in the freight segment which are via digital-mode.