The Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which manages the online rail ticketing for the Indian Railways, handled around $102 Million (Rs. 453.51 crores) of online transactions in August 2008, up 4.87 percent from $97.73 Million (Rs. 432.44 crores) in July.
What is particularly surprising – shocking, in fact – is that around 30 percent of this amount is refunded/transactions are unsuccessful – $31.75 Million (Rs. 140.5 crores) in August, and $29 Million (Rs. 132 crores) in July.
Other trends
– The average transaction amount (view) is Rs. 931. For Credit Cards, it is Rs. 1027; Rs. 820 for Netbanking; the average for Cash Card transactions varies between 889 and 926.
– Credit Cards account for 41 percent of successful transactions, Netbanking 31 percent, and Cash Cards 26 percent
– Banks account for 76 percent of total transactions, 72 percent of amount transacted
– Around 29 percent of transactions are unsuccessful
– Net Banking is the least successful transaction method – with 32-35 percent failure rate
– On an average, the Rupee amount for unsuccessful transactions is higher than that of successful transactions
– The average time taken for a refund – 2.68 days in August, 2.58 days in July (note: data for some gateways not available)
More Cash Card Trends And Charts for ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI, ITZ Cash Card and Done Card -
ICICI Bank
ICICI Bank accounts for the largest number of IRCTC transactions – 15,12,500 transactions in August and 14,02,918 in July. It accounted for 31.1% of successful transactions in in July, 32% in August. In Rupee terms, transactions via ICICI Bank were on an average Rs. 947.35 in August, and Rs. 932.35 in July. Transactions through ICICI Bank contributed 37.29% in July, 38% in August to IRCTC revenues.
HDFC Bank
HDFC Bank gateways accounted for 15.27% of successful transactions in July, 13.29% in August. In Rupee terms, it contributed 15.4% in July, 13.82% in August. August saw a significant decline in the transactions made successfully by HDFC Bank customers – by around 8.7 percent.
State Bank of India
SBI is India’s largest bank, and yet, SBI gateways – NetBanking, Debit Card and “SBI Associates” – accounted for only 8.55% of successful transactions in July, 9.83% in August. In Rupee terms, they contributed only 7.6% in July and 8.59% in August. More details in our chart here.
Cash Cards
Cash Card transactions have the highest success rate – 82 percent of transactions in July 2008 were successful, while 85 percent were sucessful in August. They account for around 22 percent of total transactions, and at least 25 percent of amount transacted. Cash Card transactions dropped marginally (4.7 percent) in August, as compared to July.
ITZ Cash Card and Done Card are comparable, while Trans I Card is fairly small. ITZ Cash Card accounted for around Rs. 44 Crores of transactions in July, and Rs. 41.6 crores in August, contributing 14.71% and 13.31% to total successful transactions in July and August respectively. Done was smaller, but close – accounting for Rs. 33 Crores in July and Rs. 34 Crores in August – 11% and 10.89 percent of total amount transacted successfully.
Analyze This
What’s your take on the data? Download the details for August and September, and tell us what you make of it. We’ll add your comments to this post.
Charts & Downloads:
- Payment Trends Overview – July (view) August (view) Overall (view)
- Average Amount Transacted (view)
- Specific Payment Gateways
- IRCTC August Payment Numbers for July 2008 (MS Excel File)
- IRCTC August Payment Numbers for August 2008 (MS Excel File)
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8 Comments until now.
Whatever be the case,it’s good to see indian public waking up to the technology benefits in this sector.Hope,these trends will be replicated in movie ticket booking and similar stuff(restaurant table booking)
If IRCTC was 50% of indian e-commerce market, does this mean that e-comm in India is 600cr per month industry? Looks too high to be true. Will welcome other people’s input on the same
These are official numbers issued by the IRCTC. Whether this is 50 percent of Indias e-commerce market or 80 percent…who knows?
Have you ever checked after booking a railway ticket through the IRCTC website how much you have been charged and why? Three agencies charge you: (a) Indian Railways: Rail fare plus the Reservation charges (b) IRCTC: Charges for booking the ticket (shown as ‘IRCTC charge’ in the ticket) (c) Bank : For effecting the payment through the payment gateway.
Why do we prefer to book tickets online? Due to the convenience, to avoid standing in the long queues at reservation centres and to save time and energy. I personally feel the long queues at the counters shows how poor the service rendered by the Railways is, and IRCTC is cleverly exploiting this even though it is also Railways company. That makes me feel cheated every time I book railway ticket online.
As I see it, either the Railways should not take reservation charges or IRCTC should not charge IRCTC charge, in case of tickets booked online. IRCTC should instead ask Railways to pass on the reservation charges to IRCTC. If this is not done, Railways will never be compelled to improve its services.
Great information! I am looking for the contribution of pre-paid cash cards in the total transaction. Is there anyone who can help me on this?
Hi Ravi Kumar,
As far as I know that in Banking Sector, icici is largest payment gateway and in cash cards its itzcash card. This makes itzcash card the largest payment gateway in cash card category. Can anybody throw more light on it?
while i agree with you, i think the railway is hardly concerned with quality of service or the number of people it employs. the trend is if you buy air tickets online in some cases you get upto a 5% discount over fares issued from the same airlines office directly. but i reckon a bunch of factors come into play for airlines as they are a lot more price sensitive.
Laloo & his men are not very price or quality sensitive right now and it shows. A great mass of commuters want to get from A-B cheap and a great many of them dont even pay taxes let alone use credit cards. there is no other way to service them but queuing up.
i remember about 3 and a half years ago talking to a close friends father who was a successful travel agent. We were discussing taking his business online i.e. through a travel portal although he did not have a very good grip on technology as an organization the biggest stumbling block was the start up costs and then processing fees charged by banks/service providers.
We mulled using an overseas payment processor but the whole thing hit too many roadblocks and the process was wound up. I was pretty sure though that online usage would pick up as the service providers & users get more and more savvy.