The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), is reportedly set to launch its own payment gateway as the online ticketing platform seeks additional revenue and looks to reduce dependency on third-party payment platforms.
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation is expected to start the pilot for its in-house payment gateway over the next 4-8 weeks, reported Mint, quoting two sources. The payment gateway is internally being called ‘ipay’ and will be rolled out in phases once the testing is successfully completed, the report added.
Meanwhile, the IRCTC’s internet ticketing revenue witnessed a drop of 26 per cent to Rs 466.05 crore in fiscal year 2016-17. Internet ticketing comes as the second-largest category for the IRCTC at around 33 per cent of total revenue.
Data showed that Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation sold around 209 million tickets via online platform in FY17, which saw an increase of 5 per cent from 199 million tickets sold in the previous fiscal. Together, these 209 million tickets aggregated up to Rs 24,485.21 crore in FY17.
Despite witnessing a decline on e-ticketing revenue, IRCTC still outruns MakeMyTrip which recorded 9.3 million ticket sales in FY17 valuing up to Rs 14,800 crore.
Apart from this, IRCTC also registered a growth of 4.7 per cent in total income to Rs 1,596.31 crore in FY17. While both gross margin and profit before tax came in at Rs 353.42 crore and Rs 211.71 crore which grew by over 7 per cent.
arlier in October 2017, Indian Railways had extended the deadline for passengers to enjoy no service charges on their e-ticket booking till March 2018. During fiscal year 2016, about one-third of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation’s revenue of Rs 1,500 crore came from internet booking which stood at Rs 540 crore.
Also read : Indian Railways bets on new OMRS technology to prevent train derailment
, is reportedly set to launch its own payment gateway as the online ticketing platform seeks additional revenue and looks to reduce dependency on third-party payment platforms.){kind=link}