IRCTC or Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, the e-ticketing arm of Indian Railways, has set certain rules for booking and cancellation of train tickets. Passengers can book a ticket up to 120 days in advance for all classes and trains, according to IRCTC's website - irctc.co.in. For such bookings, IRCTC offers several payment options which can be used as per user's convenience, such as net banking, cards payment, e-wallet service, digital wallets. A person booking a train ticket from the IRCTC e-ticketing website may sometimes face difficulties while paying the booking amount due to the high number of transactions per second. This may result in payment failure.
The online payment at IRCTC involves complex system of technical and telecommunication networking integration between customer's Internet bandwidth, IT system of banks and payment gateways and is dependent on internet connectivity across various constituents. Any failure or delay in this complex network may cause transaction failure before completion. This can raise the situation when money is debited from the account but ticket not booked with the following possibilities:
1. When payment is settled but ticket not booked
This case occurs when passenger opted for particular berth at the time of booking and ticket is not booked due to unavailability of berth. Network failure can also be a reason. In such a scenario, the amount is credited back on the next day to the respective bank. The bank credits back the amount within 2-3 working days in account through which booking was done.
2. When settlement fails and tickets are not booked
Such a scenario arises when system or network fails at banks end or at payment gateway before remitting ticket amount to IRCTC. The amount is not credited to the IRCTC account and stays with the bank. The bank then refunds the money after due verification.
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