Representational Image | Photo: Sreejith P Raj / Mathrubhumi
Thiruvananthapuram: The digital payment facility to pay ticket fares in Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) buses via PhonePe, a popular online payment application, is likely to be delayed.
The inauguration of the new payment system, which was scheduled to be conducted on December 28, was earlier postponed due to technical issues. The plan was to enable passengers pay the ticket fare by scanning QR codes installed inside the bus.
The system was prepared as part of a startup initiative. Reportedly, limitations to set up online transaction facilities in buses and inconsistencies in the KSRTC accounting system are the reasons for the current delay.
For several years, KSRTC was asked to provide facilities for online payment system rather than forcing passengers to carry liquid cash while travelling.
As of now, bus conductors are supposed to pay the daily revenue from each bus to the depots by the end of their duty. However, in case of online payments, the details of the transactions will have to be included in the conductor’s daily account.
As a result, it was decided to collect the online payments into a centralized account and inform the conductor about the receipt of the amount. However, the ticket machines are not equipped to transfer the payment information.
Another option was to send SMS to the mobile phones of the conductors. For this, the data of all the conductors would have to be collected online and is likely to cause technical errors.
In addition, it is not practical to install speakers in buses to announce the payment results as there are more than 3800 KSRTC buses across the state.
According to reports, the digital payment system will be set up only after resolving all the issues.
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