For the first time ever, Indian Railways has tied up with a bank to sell their tickets other than their own platform. ICICI Bank’s website and mobile app have thus become the first non-IRCTC platform which can now book train tickets.
The best part is that, non-ICICI Bank customers can also use this facility to book their train tickets.
New users who have never used IRCTC’s website first need to register themselves with Indian Railways. Once this is done, passengers need to complete a one-time registration with ICICI Bank in order to book train tickets via their website and mobile app.
In terms of record, then this is for the first time that a bank is offering to book Indian Railways tickets from their own platform (website/app). Considering that customers of ICICI Bank, as well as other banks can use ICICI Bank’s app called Pockets to book train tickets can very well be a boost for its usage.
Executive Director, ICICI Bank Limited, Mr. Rajiv Sabharwal, said: “Online rail ticket booking on the Bank’s website for customers of any bank is yet another exciting service for the rapidly growing digitally savvy customer base in India. This service will soon be also available on the bank’s mobile banking app, iMobile as well as on its digital bank on mobile phone, Pockets.”
IRCTC Website Replicated on ICICI Bank?
As per emerging reports, we found that this new service would be ‘almost’ replica of IRCTC website: passengers can check their PNR status, enquire about train availability, cancel their reservation besides booking a new ticket.
ICICI Bank will directly connect with the IRCTC’s server, and enable the end-users to accomplish every action which they can do on IRCTC.co.in website.
Going by the features, it seems that ICICI Bank’s new partnership will end the exclusivity of IRCTC’s website for booking tickets.
The highest record of IRCTC’s train booking is 13.5 lakh on a single day.
As of April 1, 2015, IRCTC handled close to 13.5 lakh tickets, which included 1.25 lakh tatkal tickets. On an average, 5 lakh ticket per day is the norm for IRCTC.
Considering that IRCTC charges service fee of Rs 20 per sleeper class ticket, it can be a huge revenue generation stream for ICICI Bank as well. Even if we assume that ICICI Bank will deflect close to 1 lakh tickets a day from IRCTC, it will amount to Rs 73 crore revenue for ICICI Bank on a annual basis.
No financial detail of this new partnership has come out.
