Indian Railways is planning to equip its travelling ticket examiners (TTEs) with pocket sized Point of Sale (POS) machines for receiving money.
This move aims to reduce the costs of handling cash and reduce paperwork.
Sources said that India’s largest bank State Bank of India has suggested the use of a SIM card based pocket sized POS machine for TTEs. This follows SBI meeting IR officials for discussing integration of hand held devices provided to TTEs with the common payment gateway of CRIS, the IR entity responsible for computerized reservation.
It is gathered that CRIS is discussing the matter with the POS team of SBI. Detailed guidelines on transaction flows and the process of entry into books of accounts are being formulated by the Commercial & Finance Directorates, sources said.
This CRIS gateway provides all modes of payments –internet banking, debit and credit cards, cash cards, UPI and the like for passengers to book tickets.
Pilot Project
IR has already provided 550 hand held devices for ticket checking activities in December 2018 on Rajdhani and Shatabdi express trains in the first phase. On the anvil shortly, is the testing of digital payment through ‘BHIM’ UPI being developed by CRIS on the existing hand held terminal (HHT) application.
Use of HHTs would be finalised only after the present specifications are reviewed based on user feedback followed approval from the Railway Board.
As on date, IR uses SBI’s POS machines for its passenger reservation system, unreserved tickets and booking parcels.
Are all pos machines sim based or are there any other type