Railways rolls out Unreserved Mobile Ticketing facility

Passengers can now purchase unreserved train tickets without standing in long queues as Ministry of Railways has introduced Unreserved Mobile Ticketing with a view to promote digital payment and customers convenience.

This comes following a successful pilot project conducted for booking of unreserved tickets through mobile phone in December 2014 on select stations of Central Railway to provide customers the convenience of booking of unreserved tickets without having to stand in queues.

Gradually, unreserved Mobile ticketing was extended to all suburban sections in metropolitan cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Secunderabad between 2015 and 2017 along with the facility of paperless ticketing. The Indian Railways said that the facility of booking unreserved tickets, including season tickets and also platform tickets is available through the 'UTSONMOBILE' app available for Android, IOS and Windows phones.

The process of ticket booking involves downloading the application and registration by furnishing the requisite details. After successful registration, the user is given user-ID and password through which the user can log-in and book ticket through this application within the ticketing area and outside the Geo-fenced area (Geo-fenced area is station premises and train route within which ticket cannot be booked. Ticketing area is outside the geo-fenced area). Initially, the payment could be made only through R-Wallet. Subsequently, the facility of making payment through all types of digital modes -- debit card, credit card, net-banking, UPI and other e-wallets -- has been introduced through payment aggregators like Paytm, Mobikwik and Freecharge, in line with Government's directives to promote all digital modes of payments. The daily average number of passengers booking tickets through this app has increased from approximately 5400 in year 2015 to 4.70 lakh in October, 2018.

The UTSONMOBILE was also introduced on Non-Suburban sections in 2015 initially on Delhi-Palwal section of Northern Railway which was subsequently extended to other non-suburban sections of Northern, South Central, Southern, South Western, East Coast, South East Central and South Eastern Railways.