Title - Railway to offer discount for cashless booking of unreserved railway tickets

Indian Railways has come up with a innovative plan to motivate passengers to use cashless mediums while booking there train tickets. Railway has decided that it will offer .5% of instant discount on booking a train ticket of unreserved category through cashless medium. Search discount is already being offered on purchase of monthly travel pass through debit or credit cards. According to a senior Railway official, Railway is trying to minimise the use of cash as much as possible. Earlier Railway has waived off service charge on tickets booked through it's IRCTC website. Despite losing rupees 400 crore due to this Railway is continuing on with this waiver. However this has also made cashless transaction more popular within Railway travellers as cashless transactions in the passenger segment has risen up by over 20%. Railway is targeting up to 85 to 90% of cashless transaction through various means. Indian Railways earns rupees 48000 crore every year from passenger revenues. It must be noted that in freight segment 95% of transactions are made via cashless mediums. Also to promote cashless payments Railway has also started accepting cards and BHIM app at unreserved ticket counters.