Indian Railways says no MDR charges for booking train ticket via debit card

In a move to further boost digitisation, the Indian Railways has announced that no merchant discount rate (MDR) charges will be levied for the travellers who opt for booking their tickets through debit cards. 

MDR exemption is only applicable on train tickets which are booked for a transaction value up to Rs 1,00,000. 

The banks are issued with the above-mentioned directions by the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance on February 26, 2018.

MDR is referred as a charge to a merchant by a bank for accepting payment from their customers in credit and debit cards every time a card is used for payments in their stores. 

The Ministry of Railways in a statement stated it has informed the Department of Expenditure that all proceeds from the sale of tickets through IRCTC website/counters go to Consolidated Fund of India through Ministry of Railways and such transactions should be considered as government receipts.

It has ensured that the benefits of government transactions must be passed on to the public, and thus they should not be charged with MDR while making payments to the government.

Furthermore, to make things easier for passengers, the Indian Railways has initiated the facility of printing ticket details in local language on unreserved tickets issued through Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) with first such language being Kannada.

With the above-mentioned development, your railway tickets may slightly get cheaper.