April 17: The Immigration Office at the Tribhuvan International Airport has urged foreign tourists visiting Nepal to pay their on-arrival visa fee in cash after facing problems in electronic transaction. The airport authorities said e-payment was cumbersome and sometimes there were technical glitches in the system.

According to the state-owned national news agency RSS, Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA)’s Manager Prem Nath Thakur informed that tourists visiting Nepal had to stay in queue for three to four hours to pay their on-arrival visa fee due to malfunctioning of the software time and again.

Due to such hassles, the airport urged the Department of Immigration to make arrangements for the visiting foreigners to pay the fees in cash. Now, a notice in this regard has already been published, said Manager Thakur.    
At present, a large number of foreign tourists are visiting Nepal and there is only one ATM machine at the TIA, RSS further reported. Besides, technical problems were detected in course of e-payment through different medium. To avoid difficulties faced by the visiting foreign tourists, they have been asked to pay their on-arrival visa fee in cash.    
Each visiting foreign tourist has to pay US$ 200 as fee for the on-arrival visa.