Since a massive portion of commuters use the Indian railways for travelling, so food becomes a very important segment of the journey. IRCTC with its continued efforts had recently introduced an e-catering app called Food-on-Track. But, it is now further ramping up the service to integrate a digital payment service into the app.
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation(IRCTC) has today announced an exclusive partnership with online digital payments platform Mobikwik, to power the e-cash payments on IRCTC’s food delivery app. Mobikwik is already a digital payments partner for the IRCTC connect app, which allows users to book tickets instantly.
Using the food delivery app, the commuters will be able to book food items from their preferred restaurants, pay for the same using Mobikwik and get piping hot food delivered right at their train coach(or seat). Using the app, passengers can pre-order food at over 300+ stations from prominent food chains such as Dominos, Punjab Grill, KFC, IRCTC Food Plaza and others.
Commenting on the partnership, Mrinal Sinha, COO, MobiKwik, said,
Last year, MobiKwik became the primary wallet on IRCTC Connect, and this year, we are taking our partnership a step further by offering a robust e-cash payments option on IRCTC’s e-catering app.
Our partnership will greatly benefit users, as they don’t have to worry about paying in cash or search for change, given that trains halt at platforms only for a few seconds or minutes.
According to a Google-BCG report, digital payments will be a humongous $500 Billion market by 2020, comprising of 15% of India’s GDP. Thus, IRCTC is also making the shift from traditional cash transactions towards the digital alternative with help from Mobikwik. Paying for their meals via Mobikwik will also help commuters order food and even get it delivered to them at stations where the stoppage time is very less.
Mobikwik has recently been growing and adding more services to its platform. It has also toned down its Android app and launched a lighter version, which can also be accessed in areas with spotty or patchy mobile connection(as expected in India). It had recently also enabled cash loading through ‘cash pick up‘ in select cities and cash deposit at over 100000 locations across 1000 cities in India. This is highly beneficial for individuals with no access to Internet banking or plastic money.
