There are several ways through which you can book your train tickets, few of which are online and few offline. One of the ways is to go to the official IRCTC website, which still has a lot of problems, thus one would prefer to have some other source, like the 3rd party services like Cleartrip, Yatra, Makemytrip etc. which would easily do the ticket booking. But very soon, we are going to see the service officially from IRCTC using which you can book a train ticket directly from the mobile phone, and that too in the easiest way, i.e. by SMS.
There are two types of services going to be opened by Indian Railways from 1st July:
- SMS Based Booking
- Menu-Based Dialing
SMS Based Booking of Train Tickets
A dedicated number for ticket-booking should be announced soon by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC). To get this service, the user has to register his mobile number with the IRCTC as well as with their bank, and the users would be given a unique Mobile Money Identifier (MMID) and one time password (OTP).
To book the ticket, the user will have to send the SMS as BOOK and this has to be followed by the Train Number, Destination, Journey Date, Class and Passenger Details which includes the Name, Age and Gender. Once the things are confirmed, the users will receive a Transaction ID, and they can initiate the payment by sending an SMS to a designated number by typing PAY followed by the Tran ID and the MMID which they had received from the bank.
Menu-Based Dialing for Booking
This is going to be an IVR service where the users would be needed to dial a dedicated number provided by the service and the payment authorization will be done via the mobile wallet. This would be through the mPIN and the booking confirmation SMS will be sent by the IRCTC.
IRCTC’s service will be available to all mobile subscribers. Every SMS will cost Rs 3 and the payment gateway charge will be Rs 5 for tickets amounting upto Rs 5,000 and Rs 10 for tickets that cost above Rs 5,000.
Book IRCTC Train Tickets through Mobile via SMS from July 2013