Vietnam to put railway e-ticket system into use on September 1

Railway passengers in Vietnam will be able to buy tickets through an online ticketing system that will begin operating at 2:00 am on September 1, the Vietnam Railways Corporation (VRC) said on Wednesday.

Through this e-system, passengers can book seats, buy and print tickets, pay for their tickets and receive e-invoices anywhere and anytime, without having to visit a railway station, the VRC said.

Passengers can carry out all the above steps on the websites vietrailways.com.

Specifically, after passengers complete their online ticket booking and payment, they will have all the related information transmitted to their email addresses.

In case passengers have no email address, they can register to receive e-ticket information via mobile phone text messages.

With this information, passengers can either print the tickets on a normal printer using A4-size paper, or provide the code numbers of tickets to a railway station so that the station can print the tickets for them when they arrive at the terminal.

This way, passengers will either use the code numbers of e-tickets sent to their cell phone to print the tickets on the above-mentioned websites, or have railway stations print them at terminals.

Every e-ticket contains a Quick Response (QR) code that will be identified by a control device, the VRC said.

In order to ensure the stable, correct and safe operation of the e-ticket system, the VRC will halt payment collection by post offices, transaction offices of the Vietnam Investment Bank (VIB), Internet banking and ATMs during the first 15 days of September.

In this period, passengers are required to pay for their tickets online or pay at ticket selling points, the VRC said.