Come July and you can book your train ticket by sending an SMS. Keeping an eye on the growing mobile phone market, the online ticketing arm of the Railways, IRCTC, will launch SMS-based ticketing from July 1 and a dedicated number will be announced soon for this.

 

Making the announcement, a senior IRCTC official said, "mobile- based booking provides the users ease and convenience of booking tickets from anywhere and anytime. There will be no requirement of a printout because the ticketing message will be considered as valid during the journey." All one needs to do is to register his/her mobile number with IRCTC as well as one's bank. The bank provides MMID (mobile money identifier) and OTP (one-time password) for authorization of payment.The official said SMS booking is very simple as a passenger has to type the train number, destination, journey date, class and passenger details like name, age and gender on the SMS box.

 

"The sender will receive transaction ID and then make payment through sending another SMS by typing ‘pay’ followed by the transaction ID, MMID as received from the bank and password, said the official adding "with this the passenger's ticket is booked." The service is available to all mobile subscribers and Rs 3 is being charged per SMS and payment gateway charges are Rs 5 for ticket amount up to Rs 5,000 and Rs 10 for more than Rs 5,000.