IRCTC Now Lets You Pay for Rail Tickets in Instalments

The Indian Railways and Citibank have partnered to offer IRCTC website users the ability to pay ticket fares in monthly instalments (EMIs). The service was rolled-out at the time of writing.

Notably, the IRCTC ticket EMI service is only available for Citibank credit card subscribers. While the tie-up is a welcome one for Citibank card holders, it doesn't represent a very large step forward, as credit card-issuing banks offer zero percent EMI schemes on a large variety of purchases.

To avail the service, IRCTC users will need to click on the EMI option on the payment screen, instead of credit card, debit card, cash card, and net banking. Users will then need to select Citibank from the dropdown, feed in their Citibank credit card details and authorise the payment of the entire ticket fare. Users can then pay back Citibank in monthly instalments. We expect more banks will sign up to offer the service.

The Indian Railways recently released the official IRCTC app for Android, after having released the app for BlackBerry 10 users in August, and Windows Phone 8 users last September.

Called IRCTC Connect, the new official Indian Railways app for Android can now be downloaded for free from Google Play India, and is about 12MB in size. The app is compatible with devices running Android 4.1 and above.

As on other platforms, the official IRCTC Connect app for Android allows users to book railway tickets, apart from checking reservation status, train schedules, train routes, availability of tickets, cancellation, booking history, recent history, favourites, and more.

The IRCTC Connect app for Android comes with features such as one step login for existing users; search and book train tickets; viewing and cancellation of tickets; retaining of recently added passenger details, and upcoming journey alerts.