The Eastern Railways has entered into an agreement with country's largest lender State Bank of India to purchase and install 815 PoS machines at the ticket booking counters under its jurisdiction, a railway official said on Tuesday.
"We have installed 10 machines already. Our plan is to cover all the passenger reservation system (PRS) counters of Kolkata and suburbs in the next seven days," said Eastern Railways' Financial Adviser and Chief Accounts Officer Dipankar Lahiri.
He said that all the PRS counters under Eastern Railways, from Bihar's Bhagalpur to the Bangladesh border, would be covered, and all the unreserved ticketing system (UTS) counters would also be brought in the cashless system.
"Installing of PoS at all the PRS and UTS counters will be completed by January 15, 2017," he said, adding that the Railways will pay Rs 3.74 lakh to SBI for purchasing and installation purpose.
In the second phase, the Eastern Railways will buy machines to keep as a stand-by at all the points where tickets are sold, Lahiri said. Ticket bookers will have to pay 0.75 percent additionally in case of booking through debit card and they need to pay 1.5 percent in case of booking through credit card over and above the cost of the tickets.
"No charge will be levied till December end but charges will be imposed from January," he said.
"Depending on the terminal, monthly charge per machine will vary from Rs 220 to Rs 400 which is very nominal," said SBI's Chief General Manager (Kolkata circle) Partha Pratim Sengupta.
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Sengupta also said the bank has supplied 10 PoS to South-Eastern Railways and will supply 158 more to them.
--IANS
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