Railways to go cashless soon, asks banks to provide point of sale machines at reservation counters

Railways has asked the banks, including State Bank of India (SBI) and ICICI Bank to provide around 15,000 point of sale machines (POS) at the reservation counters to make bookings digital, reports have said. Out of 15,000, about a thousand machines will be made available by December 31.

As of now, there are no POS machines available at railways for debit and credit card payments at its ticket counters.

“We have around 12,000 ticket counters. All of them would be equipped with one or more POS machines depending on the daily transactions. Managing cash is also a huge task for our staff. It would be beneficial for them as well if we could have enough swipe machines,” a senior rail board official said. 

In the first phase, Railways will provide such machines at counters at all the urban centres. 

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“In places like Mumbai, where there’s a huge sale of monthly passes, we would have POS machines installed immediately. SBI has promised to provide 1,000 machines,” the official added.