You can now book tatkal railway tickets online and pay later

People can now pay later for tickets booked under the tatkal quota on the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp (IRCTC) website, it was announced on Wednesday.

Till now, this service was available only for general reservations. For tatkal bookings, people had to pay first via the standard online payment gateways before the IRCTC portal confirmed their ticket.

For tatkal tickets, IRCTC users will be able to pay via cash, debit card or credit card by opting to have tickets delivered at their doorstep, said IRCTC payment provider Anduril Technologies.

IRCTC processes 130,000 Tatkal transactions daily. A majority of these tickets are booked within minutes of the quota opening.

The new feature eliminates the transaction failures as often the money gets debited and the ticket is not issued due to multiple reasons. The refund cycle is of about seven to 15 days.

"The pay on delivery feature completely circumvents the use of a payment gateway and will help users make the bookings in just a few seconds greatly increasing their chance of booking a confirmed ticket under the tatkal quota," said Anduril Technologies CEO Anurag Bajpai.

He said it will hugely benefit millions of travellers.