With over six crore users booking railway tickets on the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website on a daily basis, the Indian Railways' catering and ticketing arm along with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Bank of Baroda Financial Solutions (BFSL) on Monday launched a co-branded credit card to tap the huge potential the market offers.
The 'IRCTC BoB RuPay Contactless Credit Card' is specially curated to offer the maximum savings to the frequent travellers on the Indian Railways, the officials said at the launch here.
BOB Financial Solutions Ltd (BFSL) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of Baroda (BoB).
Customers can also use the credit card for other shopping purposes like groceries as well as fuel buy. Cardholders can also use this card to transact at international merchants and ATMs through the JCB network.
The credit card will offer benefits such as up to 40 reward points (per ₹100 spent) on 1AC, 2AC, 3AC, CC, or EC bookings made through the IRCTC website or mobile app.
It also offers a 1% transaction fee waiver for the customers on all their train ticket bookings. Moreover, those making a single purchase worth ₹1,000 or more within 45 days of card issuance will get 1,000 bonus reward points.
The card will also offer four reward points (per Rs 100 spent) on grocery and departmental stores and two reward points on other categories. Cardholders will be entitled to four complimentary visits per year at partner railway lounges. It will also offer a one per cent fuel surcharge waiver across all petrol pumps in India.
Besides, the users can also redeem the accrued reward points on the IRCTC website and mobile app, after linking their Loyalty Number (printed on the co-branded credit card) with their IRCTC login ID.
At the launch of the card, NPCI Chief Operating Officer Praveena Rai said there are more than 6.6 crore users on IRCTC and many of them are frequent travellers.
"And, there are more than 7-7.5 lakh ticket bookings on a daily basis on IRCTC. This is an opportune time to launch this card as we come back to normal travel after two years of low travel.
"We are really looking forward to getting the benefit from this proposition. We are really looking significantly towards moving on to RuPay credit cards now," Ms. Rai added.
She said the indigenously developed card payments technology platform RuPay is unique in the sense that it covers the entire length and breadth of the country, and there is a premium to mass level to the bottom of the pyramid customers who use the RuPay cards.
IRCTC Chairman and Managing Director Rajni Hasija said, "IRCTC has rich experience in offering its customers with such co-branded cards and has a tie-up with another public sector bank to offer its loyalty program to its customers." Ms. Hasija added that the recent collaboration with BOB Financial in launching IRCTC BoB RuPay Contactless Credit Card is another landmark step towards the promotion of the indigenous RuPay payment platform and realising the vision of Digital India of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
BFSL Managing Director and CEO Shailendra Singh said, "The card will offer uninterrupted payment convenience and benefits to customers for rail travel as well as all other shopping needs." He added that the company also expects the co-branded card to act as a catalyst for further adoption of digital payments in deeper geographies, helped by the presence of both the railway network as well as BoB branches.
