The MoU was signed by Rajni Hasija, group general manager of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation and Sachin Khandelwal, general manager of ICICI Bank in the presence of Railway Minister Lalu Prasad and his two deputies Naranbhai J Rathaw and R Velu.

Chairman Railway Board J P Batra, Chairman IRCTC P K Goel and managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank K V Kamath were also present during the signing ceremony at Rail Bhawan.

Prasad said it has been the policy of Railways to provide "more and more" passenger facilities at "door steps". He said people are the central point for preparing railway plans and programmes and he would keep this in mind while presenting his next budget on February 26.

The web-enabled services through e-points of sale (e-POS) machines located at merchant establishments/shopping malls in over 125 cities all over the country would enable dispensation of reserved tickets to the common man, apart from the existing services of e-ticketing.

The tickets can be purchased through credit cards/cash on payment of service charges/surcharges as per visa/master card rules, Railway Ministry officials said.

The association of Indian Railways with ICICI Bank would facilitate spreading the network of reservation counters right into the every part of the country, providing tremendous convenience to passengers for reservation or cancellation.

ICICI has 1.6 lakh establishments across the country and if the present scheme is successful, it could be further extended to other establishments.

The machines, called swiping machines (e-POS) available in high concentration areas could be utilised by the public for purchase of reserved tickets as well as his shopping needs, ICICI officials said.

They were also of the view that the facility would ease the ticket counters across the railway stations, besides saving valuable time and energy of the rail users.

In a lighter vein, the Railway Minister said that ICICI has been an old creditor to the Railways and even has asked the bank to further provide loans for the completion of railway projects.

Earlier, the Railways (IRCTC) had signed an MOU with the State Bank of India to install over 750 ATMS for the same purpose. Talks are still on with several other Banks to utilise their facilities for the sale of Railway tickets.

Indian Railways is also tying up with various Petrol Distributing Agencies (Petrol Pumps) and also held talks with Post and Telegraph department to utilise post-offices for the purpose.