WCR installing PoS machines for ticket, parcel bookings

West Central Railway (WCR) has started installing point-of-sale (PoS) machines for ticket and parcel bookings in order to encourage cashless transactions.
Headquartered at Jabalpur, over 300km from here, the railway zone has already set up two dozen PoS machines and 156 such devices will be introduced at 80 locations under its jurisdiction in the next two months as part of its move to encourage cashless transactions.
"WCR would introduce 156 PoS machines in the next two months at 80 locations. So far, 24 PoS machines have been installed at 24 locations," Public Relations Officer of WCR I A Siddiqui said in a statement today.

WCR General Manager Girish Pillai shared this information at a high-level meeting with Members of Parliament (MPs) held at a local hotel today. The meeting was attended by MPs from Bhopal, Rajgarh and Dewas.
Siddiqui said the Parliamentarians were briefed about various initiatives taken by the WCR and their suggestions were sought on improving passenger amenities.
The MPs were informed that food outlets at railway stations are also being provided PoS machines in addition to mobile-based app for transactions. They were told WCR would install 76 automatic vending machines at four stations.

"These automatic vending machines would provide packaged food items to passengers. In addition, 71 water vending machines are also being installed at eight stations under WCR," he added.

Moreover, ten stations - Bina, Habibganj, Hoshangabad, Itarsi, Vidisha, Sanchi, Shivpuri, Harda, Guna and Ganjbasoda - would soon be equipped with free wi-fi facilities.
During the meeting, Bhopal MP Alok Sanjar suggested starting a daily train between Bhopal and Pune. He also advocated starting trains from the State capital to Bengaluru and Chhapra (Bihar).