Plan to make Delhi bus tickets available on Google Pay, Paytm

A team of IIIT-Delhi has set in motion a project to get platforms such as Paytm and Google Pay to sell public bus tickets in the city and map out all electric vehicle charging stations in mobile apps.

The project also aims to make available transit data of all Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses to companies for them to develop apps to help commuters plan their commute better.

The initiative is being supported by the Delhi Knowledge Development Foundation, a Delhi government body. So far, an allocation of Rs 6.1 crore has been made for this purpose, Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said Monday.

Towards this end, the government has signed an MoU with IIIT-Delhi to set up a Centre for Sustainable Mobility, which will be headed by Professor Pravesh Biyan, who is a faculty member at the institute.

“In the immediate future, scaling up contactless ticketing, mapping out e-charging stations and making DTC transit data available will be our priority. We will try to ensure that at least 10 per cent of all ticketing transactions in public buses is contactless in the next three months. All these things will also be available in the One Delhi app being developed by the centre for the government,” Biyani told The Indian Express.

Currently, e-tickets for Delhi’s public buses are only available in an app called ‘Chartr’ developed by the IIIT-Delhi. Biyani said an API developed for this purpose will be made public for other e-payment portals to make bus tickets available.

API is an interface which allows softwares to share information over networks such as the internet. For example, if someone wants to build an application which has Google Maps built into it, they can request the maps service from Google using their APIs.

If the plan works out, applications such as Paytm, GooglePay will be able to add a feature for paying for bus tickets on their platforms along with route number, origination, destination, fare.

There are approximately 6,600 public buses in the capital currently, as against the Supreme Court-mandated requirement of 11,000 buses.