IRCTC looks to ruffle fintech feathers

RBI has granted in-principle nod to IRCTC Payments to operate as a payments aggregator

- AJINKYA KAWALE

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), India's largest online ticketing platform, is gearing up to foray into the country's fintech space.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already granted an in-principle nod to its wholly-owned arm, IRCTC Payments, to operate as a payments aggregator.

The move is significant for one reason—scale. With about 100 million registered users and more than 1.4 million transactions daily, IRCTC sits on a payments goldmine.

Until now, this volume has been routed through multiple third-party payment aggregators along with iPay; its own digital payments gateway.

A dedicated payment aggregator (PA) licence changes that equation—IRCTC can now process a chunk of the transactions in-house. It can also cut costs and monetise its payments infrastructure beyond the railways ecosystem.