Now, dial 139 to book rail tickets

New Delhi: Non-smartphone users of the Indian railways will now be able to book tickets through their mobile phones with the railways deciding to provide the facility of booking tickets by dialling 139. The move will help passengers, who do not have a smartphone to book tickets.

Till now, this facility was only available for checking the status of wait-listed tickets.

The railways already has facilities of online booking of tickets and it can also be booked through mobile applications. “This facility will help people who do not have smartphones,” a senior railway official said,

After booking the ticket by dialling 139, a passenger can pay through his debit or credit card. According to sources, booking of tickets through the IRCTC mobile app has also increased post demonetisation.  

The railways has already taken many steps to promote cashless transactions at reservation counters,

Southern Railway has installed point of sale (POS) machines at major railway stations across the zone to enable the passengers to use debit/credit cards for ticket booking. While POS machines were already available at 21 locations, the zone has added 31 more now in Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchi and Madurai divisions. Railway officials said the target was 300 POS machines by the end of January 2017.

The railways has also announced 10,000 POS machines would be installed at reservation counters in association with the State Bank of India.

After passenger reservation system (PRS) terminals get covered by adequate POS machines, the focus would shift to unreserved ticket counters and suburban ticketing system, the official said.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has sent advisory to all zonal railways on the working arrangement with the State Bank of India with regard to the use of POS machines.

Railways minister Suresh Prabhu had announced that even end-users and vendors would be sensitised to use cashless channels like e-wallets.

The Indian Railways, which has a six billion passenger traffic every year, does 58 per cent of its ticketing online, without cash.