Deli Metro will soon facilitate smoother travel for the passengers. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation(DMRC) has made decisions to upgrade its ‘Automatic Fare Collection System(AFCS)’.
Upon upgrading, passengers travelling in Delhi Metro can use their debit and credit cards to pay for the distance they have travelled.
Hindi national daily Hindustan reports that DMRC is going to start the trial of collecting the fare directly from the debit and credit card of the user, which in turn will save passenger time without requiring to recharge the smart card frequently; and this will further promote contactless fare collection system. The trial will commence in December this year at the Airport Express line of Delhi Metro.
After its implementation, regular travellers of Delhi Metro will not need to recharge their smart recharge card at the ticket counter. The credit and debit card will act as a smart card and the money will automatically get deducted as the passengers touch their card at the Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) gate for exiting the metro station.
DMRC has begun upgrading around 600 AFC gates for this purpose. All the cards that are Rupay, Visa and Mastercard compliant will act as a smart card and it can be of any bank.
In another development, DMRC has decided that passengers can now pay their fine with the smart card from now on. For now, users have to pay the fine in cash.
Delhi Metro operations have been closed for the public since March 22 in view of the covid-19 pandemic and measures taken to curb the spread of the disease. This closure of services in the past few months has led to a loss in revenue for the urban transporter worth around Rs 1,300 crore.