In line with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government push for cashless transactions, the Indian Railways has introduced the facility of booking railway tickets on Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app based on the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). This facility will be available for booking of reserved tickets from Passenger Reservation System (PRS) counters and booking of Season Tickets (MST and QST) from Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) counters.
The Railways has decided not to levy any additional charges for three months. The new initiative will add to the digital payment option already available to railway passengers. Passengers were earlier using BHIM app to book e-tickets online on IRCTC Website. Now, this facility is being extended to the tickets being booked from railway counters. BHIM is a mobile app developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), based on the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). BHIM is inter-operable with other Unified Payment Interface (UPI) applications and bank accounts.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing and merchant payments into one hood. It also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience.
Initially many banks have offered their own UPI applications for the customers creating little confusion among them on which UPI app to be used. For convenience of the users, a UPI App called BHIM has been developed by the Indian Government.