FASTag sale crosses 10,000-mark

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 8

The sale of FASTag, a cashless payment mechanism on toll plazas on national highways, has crossed the 10,000-mark in June, with the monthly transaction through electronic toll collection during the month crossing the Rs 1 crore-mark.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has rolled out cashless payment mechanism (FASTag) on toll plazas on national highways since late April. FASTag offers near non-stop movement of vehicles through user plazas and convenience of cashless payments of toll fee with nationwide inter-operable electronic toll collection services. FASTag is operational on more than 335 toll plazas on national highways across the country.

A dedicated FASTag lane has been earmarked at 48 toll plazas on Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Chennai Corridors. To facilitate purchase of FASTag by road users, Points of Sale (POS) on 23 toll plazas are available on these two corridors.

In order to promote cashless payment through FASTag, the government has allowed the NHAI to give 10% cash back incentive on toll payments in financial year 2016-17 for FASTag users.

The cash back amount for a particular month is credited back to the FASTag account at the beginning of the next month. In addition, the NHAI has decided to provide FASTag to existing monthly pass holders by absorbing the one-time cost of their FASTags.

The NHAI aims to cross 2 lakh FASTags by the end of the current financial year and fix dedicated lanes for ETC/FASTag on all national highways.