Noida metro starts UPI payment facility for purchasing tickets

Noida Metro Rail Corporation (NMRC) Managing Director Lokesh M inaugurated Unified Payment Interface (UPI) payment facility at the Sector 51 metro station of the Aqua Line on Thursday. The new facility will help passengers who don’t have change while purchasing tickets. Now such passengers can avoid this hassle by using the UPI payment facility across all stations of the metro network. In addition to UPI, passengers can still use cash, credit and debit cards in addition to NMRC smart cards for purchasing tickets at the counter and the customer care centres at all stations. The Sector 51 metro station has also got two automatic ticket vending machines, which have UPI facilities.

However, UPI-enabled ticket vending machines are only available at the sector 51 metro station and a proposal to place such machines in the other metro stations of the Aqua line is pending with higher authorities. 

Until now, passengers have the facility to purchase QR tickets either through cash or credit/debit card. But now the new UPI payment facility will add to passenger convenience and faster processing of tickets at counters. This will lead to less waiting time and no requirement for cash change. 

UPI payment facility has been launched as a part of NMRC’s efforts to enhance passenger convenience by implementing digital and seamless means of travel across all 21 stations of Aqua Line, as per a statement by NMRC. 

“The Digital India programme is a flagship programme of the government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally-empowered society and knowledge economy, promotion of digital payments has been accorded the highest priority by the government to extend digital payment services to every segment in the country,” the NMRC said.

 “The vision is to provide digital payments facilities to all citizens in a convenient, easy, affordable, quick and secured manner,” NMRC added.

Noida Metro Rail Corporation’s Aqua Line connects Noida and Greater Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar, covering a distance of 29.7 km through 21 stations. It was built at a cost of Rs 5,503. 

Meanwhile, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation recently introduced a mobile app that will make it easier for metro commuters in NCR to buy tickets and tokens for their journey.