New Delhi, March 1: Much to the happiness of common man, passengers travelling by trains will not to be charged Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) for Booking of Railway Tickets. The MDR charges will not be levied on passengers for booking railway tickets at the railway ticketing counters as well as through IRCTC ticketing website on payment made through Debit Cards for a transaction value upto Rupees one lakh.

The Ministry of Railways had said that the benefits on Government transactions must be passed on to the public, and they should not face MDR charges while making payments to Government. As per a government release, an instruction to this effect has been issued to the Banks by Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance on 26th February 2018. The recent move will further help in promoting digital and cashless transactions.

What is MDR charge:

MDR is a fee charged from a merchant by a bank for accepting payments from customers through credit and debit cards in their establishments. Most merchants can expect to pay a 1% to 3% fee for payment processing of each transaction. The MDR compensates the card issuing bank, the lender which puts the PoS terminal and payment gateways such as Mastercard or Visa for their services.

The Rail Ministry had informed Department of Expenditure that all proceeds from sale of tickets through IRCTC website/counters go to Consolidated Fund of India through Ministry of Railways and such transactions should be considered as Government receipts.

Indian Railways, that has more than 8000 Stations is making all-out effort to provide improved facilities at the stations including those located in small cities/towns. For Railways, improvement to Passenger amenities is a continuous process.

Apart from the MDR development, the Indian Railways has initiated the facility of printing ticket details in local language on unreserved tickets issued through Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) with first such language being Kannada. The facility was under testing at Mysuru, Bengaluru and Hubballi stations of South Western Railway with tickets being issued at these stations form one counter as trial since March 1, 2018. It will be extended to all other stations of Karnataka from March 2, 2018.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 01, 2018 09:07 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).