Noida Metro Rail Corporation (NMRC) Managing Director Lokesh M inaugurated the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payment facility at the Sector 51 metro station of the Aqua Line on Thursday.

"The UPI facility for purchasing tickets from counters is now functional at all stations of the Noida-Greater Noida Metro corridor," an official of the NMRC said.

The use of cash, credit and debit cards for purchasing tickets at the counter as well as the NMRC smart card at the customer care centre at all stations will continue as usual, the official added.

The Sector 51 metro station, which has six ticket counters and one customer care centre, also has two automatic ticket vending machines (TVM) which have the UPI facility. So far, only these two "prototype" TVMs are available at this station while a proposal to have more such machines at other stations is pending, according to the NMRC.

Built at a cost of Rs 5,503 crore, the Aqua Line connects the twin cities of Noida and Greater Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar over a distance of 29.7 km through 21 stations.

In a statement, the NMRC said the launch of UPI facility is part of its continuous endeavour to enhance passenger convenience by implementing digital and seamless means of travel across all 21 stations of Aqua Line.

"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 metro operator said.

"The vision is to provide digital payments facilities to all citizens in a convenient, easy, affordable, quick and secured manner," the NMRC said.

It said the current QR ticket purchase system has payments through either cash or credit/debit card. The new facility of extending payments of single journey tickets by means of UPI at ticket counters will definitely add to passenger convenience and faster processing of tickets at counters leading to less waiting time and no requirement of cash change as the exact ticket amount can be paid through UPI.

-With PTI Input