The Southern division of Indian Railways has announced a 5 per cent discount on tickets booked via the UTS mobile app to encourage paperless transactions, Financial Express has reported.
This 5 per cent discount would be applied on the new recharges done to the internal Railway Wallet also known as R Wallet. For example if you recharge the wallet by Rs 100, the total amount credited for the usage would be Rs 105. The wallet can either be recharged online via the app or via a railway ticketing counter.
Going by a Times of India report, this discount effective from 24 May has been approved by the Railway board and would remain in place for the next three months.
The UTS app which is available for Android, and IOS powered smartphones can be used in select locations for booking unreserved train tickets tickets. We had reported during demonetisation how the app could be an excellent vehicle to help the poor learn cashless transactions, if it was improved by the railways.
Currently going by reports, the service is used by 3 per cent of the total unreserved passengers – a number which might go up owing to the available discounts. The factor which might also help encourage such transaction is that, the service has now been extended to all the railway stations in the southern division.
Commuters are warming up to this app, which can be gauged by the fact that out of the 11.90 lakh passengers who used the train service in Chennai between 14 April to 14 May, 2.08 lakh booked tickets via the UTS app.
Even though the above reports claim that the discount has only been offered by the Southern Railways, the official website of UTS, carries a notification that “Indian Railways offers bonus on recharge of Railway Wallet (R Wallet) effective from 24.05.2018”:
Hence it raises the question whether the said offer is applicable not just for the Southern Railway, but for all the railway divisions where this service is available.
