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

Apparently, Cleartrip had site problems for a week..

Hi guys,

Just thought I would jump in here to confirm that after much research and problems with cleartrip I have been able to book through www.irctc.co.in using a UK debit card (HSBC).

As others have suggested, the key seems to be putting details in the CITI bank credit card section.

I hope this offers some relief to those worrying about their plans like I was!

Cheers!

Thanks for the information, rwspencer!

And welcome to IndiaMike!

American Express card always works for me.

Big thanks to rjspencer for his post last month. I was frantically trying to make a booking on cleartrip, but their site is misbehaving today so I followed your advice and tried the CITI payment gateway on the irctc site. I can confirm that this worked for my UK credit card. Phew!

Ahem. . Sorry something in my throat.

And, what about Post #4 and the comments made on August 14th 2010??

Okay so it's possible again it wasn't for months and months. A fact that IRCTC themselve admitted after I emailed them.

OK, I totally confess that I did not read the entire post in detail . Basically I had skipped to the end of the thread to see what the current situation was, since I have had huge problems booking with my UK credit or debit cards (through any irctc payment gateway, including CITI bank) in recent months and had defaulted to cleartrip instead, which today was also letting me down.

My intention was to express my thanks to IMers for their valuable contributions, and to confirm that as of now the situation is still good for UK cards through the CITI bank gateway.

So, please accept my thanks for your contribution too, and that goes for all who have contributed to this thread. Apologies for any offence caused, also.

That's all

I was only pulling your leg, and my tongue was firmly in-cheek.

I am only too glad that the service is working for all concerned

Although I didn't actually use a foreign card, I booked a couple of tickets recently, and thought it might be useful to post the following screen shot:



Particularly, see "Note." It might help to be prepared for this screen before encountering it

Woohoo, I've just managed to book my first train using the options suggested above. Thanks everyone.

I've been having a lot of success with booking train tickets over the last few days, using the CitiBank gateway for my international credit card.

The IRCTC site on the other hand is dreadfully slow and sometimes never responds. Unfortunately the main time it never responds is just after I've used the payment gateway, have done the VerifiedByVisa bit successfully and the success info is being passed back to IRCTC. What this means is my credit card has been charged for four bookings when only the final one went all the way through to allocating tickets.

The good news is that gradually I've been receiving emails from IRCTC to say that the credit card has been refunded. I've had three so far and it's taken up to 48 hours to complete them all - at least I hope that's it all done, I lost track of how many failures I had!

From a UK point of view bookings can be made between 8pm (BST) to 7pm (BST) the next day (or 7pm to 6pm GMT). The site is so much more responsive after 8pm (BST) - which of course makes sense as it's after midnight in India then. Initially I thought that I needed to book tickets as early as possible but for most of my trains the seats aren't snapped up immediately, which means that it'll be simpler for me to wait until after 8pm (BST) when I'll have the site to myself (almost).

Overall I'm yet again impressed with all of this. I'm not surprised at the slowness of the site as it must be one of the world's largest e-commerce sites. It's reassuring to know that when a transaction fails it is sorted out automatically without the need for any emails or any phone calls.

Just for info here's what a refund email looks like. I'd not seen one before:

just want to let you know that it is also possible to book with european (here: german) credit card (visa) on irctc. but you need this "verified by visa" stuff.

Some feedback as well, i am using a French Visa credit card which is NOT "verified by visa".

I was not able to book on irctc using CITI Bank gateway today. Following error returned by website:
You Were Trying To Use citibank Payment Gateway And The Transaction CouldNot Proceed Due To There is a delay in processing the transaction.
We regret that the payment for the transaction under reference no. xxxxxxxxx was not authorised by your bankers and hence we are not in a position to process the booking.

But payment with same card on Cleartrip.com was working fine.

Out of interest are you using a new account you've just created or is it an old one of yours? I ask because it seems IRCTC are forcing the use of a valid email and mobile number for accounts these days.