The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is launching SMS based and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) based ticket booking service starting July 1, 2013, reports Times of India. This will allow users to book tickets on low end phones.
To use the service, one needs to register their mobile number with IRCTC and with their bank for the payment, which is handled through its own mobile wallet service. IRCTC has apparently tied up with 20 banks for this service, as per a The Hindu Businessline report. The bank will then provide its users with MMID (Mobile Money Identifier) and
OTP (one time password) for payment authorization.
Users can then send an SMS with the train number, destination, journey date, class and personal details (name, age and gender) to a designated number, following which they will receive a transaction ID and users can send another SMS to confirm the payment. Note that IRCTC hasn’t however disclosed the designated number to which users need to send the SMS, although the Business Line report suggests that users will be charged Rs 3 per SMS and they will also have to pay a payment gateway fee of Rs 5 for ticket amounts of up to Rs 5000 and Rs 10 for tickets amount more than Rs 5,000.
Besides SMS, users can also book tickets through USSD, by dialing the USSD number, selecting ‘book tickets’ option and providing requisite details like train number, destination, journey date, class and personal details. Users can then enter their mPIN for authorizing payment through mobile wallet. Once done, users will receive an SMS from IRCTC with their ticket details. Note that USSD based ticket booking service will not work on CDMA networks as it does not support USSD based dialing.
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To use the service, one needs to register their mobile number with IRCTC and with their bank for the payment, which is handled through its own mobile wallet service. IRCTC has apparently tied up with 20 banks for this service, as per a The Hindu Businessline report. The bank will then provide its users with MMID (Mobile Money Identifier) and
OTP (one time password) for payment authorization.
Users can then send an SMS with the train number, destination, journey date, class and personal details (name, age and gender) to a designated number, following which they will receive a transaction ID and users can send another SMS to confirm the payment. Note that IRCTC hasn’t however disclosed the designated number to which users need to send the SMS, although the Business Line report suggests that users will be charged Rs 3 per SMS and they will also have to pay a payment gateway fee of Rs 5 for ticket amounts of up to Rs 5000 and Rs 10 for tickets amount more than Rs 5,000.
Besides SMS, users can also book tickets through USSD, by dialing the USSD number, selecting ‘book tickets’ option and providing requisite details like train number, destination, journey date, class and personal details. Users can then enter their mPIN for authorizing payment through mobile wallet. Once done, users will receive an SMS from IRCTC with their ticket details. Note that USSD based ticket booking service will not work on CDMA networks as it does not support USSD based dialing.
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