Railway Ticketing to go Digital, Cashless Transaction at all Railway Stations - Latest Current Affairs for Competitive Exams

Question: Presently Railway has how many ticket counters?
(a) 12000
(b) 15000
(c) 20000
(d) 25000
Ans:(a)
Related facts:

On 2 December 2016 to encourage cashless transaction, Railways decided to install card swipe machines at parcel booking offices and all ticket reservation counters in all major stations.
Indian Railways will provide around 15,000 point of sale (PoS) machines at reservation counters, with about a thousand of these machines to be made available by Dec 31,2016.
This will make railway travel bookings digital.
Currently, the Railways does not provide POS service for debit and credit card payments at its ticket counters.
Presently railway have around 12,000 ticket counters.
All of them would be equipped with one or more POS machines depending on the daily transactions.
The railways ministry will also go cashless for paying vendors and contractors.
Railways already has 95% of its freight collection cashless. However, in the reserved category, it’s just 55%.
In unreserved category and monthly passes it’s 100% dependent on cash payments as payment through cards was not allowed.
In the first phase, counters at all urban centers would have the machines.
In places like Mumbai, where there’s a huge sale of monthly passes.
Railways through its suburban railway network will provide incentive by way of discount up to 0.5 per cent to customers for monthly or seasonal tickets from January 2017, if payment is made through digital means.