Can I book train tickets on IRCTC website using International credit card?

Looks like something has indeed changed. However both cases from GB, lets wait for other parts of the world.

I sent them a long email about international booking and the what the WWW stands for? There must have beenlots of compalints, That fast for india 3 Months.

At last! After struggling for days with various international credit cards including AMEX, finally succeeded to complete a booking!!!! But I had to talk to the AMEX guy here in Oslo to "white list" the Indian Railway.... try that - it worked! (and nothing else worked!)

While you at it, you might e-mail the many American merchants who will not ship internet orders outside of America. Amazon USA will not ship may items out of USA; Amazon UK will not ship many items out of UK. The Web maybe WorldWide, but Globalisation means, as ever, when-it-suits-us.

There are two other points to consider. One is that internet shopping, with simple and integrated use of credit and debit cards, is something that is in its infancy in India. Two, is that the proportion of railway tickets sold to foreigners and NRIs must be a very very tiny proportion of the enormous daily business of Indian Railways. Whilst I would agree that this latter is not a reason for not making it work, it must be seen that it wouldn't be an economic priority.

Having said all that, the great shame is that it did work, for several years

My Guess why IRCTC was not accepting foreign cards may have more to do with average transaction size and charges that IRCTC might incur in getting that money into its account after conversion than with the fact that foreign ticket purchases were a small part of its business, though that might be one of the reasons. I mean, how can some one pay say half a dollar in transaction costs if the product itself is a few dollars. And IRCTC has no way of adding a trip to a cart and then charging once for all tickets in the cart to increase transaction size.

Agree with the Amazon and other sites though. See that everyday on another forum i frequent.

Haha, guess what, even http://www.indianrail.gov.in/ is not loading now.

My understanding is that the recent hiatus (they had accepted foreign credit cards, for some years previously) was to do with the complications of the second-level authorisation requirements suddenly imposed by Reserve Bank of India, rather than any decision of their own.

Yes, certainly that looks more likely.

Just to add to the chorus of "it works!", I just booked a trip with IRCTC now as well, using my UK debit card and the Citibank gateway.

That is good news

That news has made my day.

After hearing about AMEX working I decided to apply for one, just to be able to book the trains. After 10 days I had a letter asking for an original bill with my name and address on it and a copy of an official document ( e.g. passport) that has been countersigned by a judge or a Finance Director of an accredited firm etc. etc.. I cancelled the application as I don't have paper bills anymore and don't know any judges (well not as friends at least ).

Has anyone tried doing the train bookings through a known/trusted travel agent based in India?
Methinks,its way easier that way.

I love it when I can say
"Told you so" (see post no 4)

There are some problems sometimes, but I put it down to simply being a very busy site.

Things change. Things change again. told-you-so from last year is not valid for this year on irctc!

I understand what you are saying about things change.

But , I also know there is a human element that also changes.
Whether its booking rail tickets, or sending money via direct bank transfer, when it comes to India, many things seem to change from one day, to the next. The bank transfers for example, (These days I do it online) I used to take myself to the bank, armed with account numbers, swift codes, etc. Sometimes the bank staff would say you need this number, or that code, as we cannot make this transfer without them. There was always a hurdle to overcome.Every time without fail, it was a bank workers fault. Sometimes it was here in the UK, just as often, it would be an Indian bank problem. The bottom line being, it was not a lack of information from me, but human error, maybe a lack of training, caused me some massive problems unnecessarily. Maybe in the case of train ticket bookings there was a problem with the inputting by the geek who sets up their website ?
I am sure though , that the Indian railways would'nt go to all the bother of having an international website, and not taking international payments.
I think it is more probably a case of a "cock up" somewhere along the line, or due to the sheer volume of traffic that travels through that route.
It is, afterall, going to be one of, if not, the worlds busiest websites.
It would'nt surprise me if it was even a case of both at the same time.

I did say before to use the Citi or Axis pg's , and it seems they do work.
I personally have never had any success using the ICICI PG, this I have always put down to the high volume of traffic.

It certainly works.

Just booked a number of trains on www.irctc.co.in using a UK credit card via the Citibank credit card option.

Happy Days, i could see travel plans dissolving as Cleartrip is up the swannee.

Thanks to whoever originally posted this method. It saved the day for me.