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FASTags
Cash payments at toll plazas will be discontinued for travellers on national highways from April 10, the road transport and highways ministry has said. In a gazette notification, the ministry has said that in cases where a vehicle enters a fee plaza without a valid FASTag, users can still pay via Unified Payment Interface (UPI), but at a higher charge of 1.25 times the applicable toll fee. A senior NHAI official said that the move is aimed at reducing long queues at toll gates and make highway travel smoother for commuters. The official said that cash payments will no longer be accepted at the toll booths from April 10 and FASTag will remain the primary mode of toll collection, while UPI will serve as the fallback payment option for vehicles that arrive without a valid FASTag. "If the user of a vehicle enters a fee plaza without a FASTag or a valid functional FASTag, as the case may be, and opts to pay fee through the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), he shall pay 1.25 times of the
There are around 5.9 crore FASTags active across the country, of the total 11.86 crore FASTags issued so far, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday. FASTag is an RFID passive tag used for making toll payments directly from the customer's linked prepaid, savings, or current account. Presently, more than 98 per cent of user fee on National Highways is collected through electronic toll collection system, the Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. "As of December, 2025, out of total issued 11.86 crore FASTags since inception, about 5.9 crore FASTags are active across the country and used for electronic toll transactions at National Highway Fee Plazas," Gadkari informed the Upper House. The number of average daily ETC transactions on NH fee plaza is around 105 lakh in 2025-26 (till December, 2025). The constant growth and adoption of FASTag by highway users is encouraging and has helped in increased efficiency in toll ...
State-owned NHAI on Friday said it has strengthened the process for reporting 'loose FASTag' for blacklisting users to ensure smooth tolling operations. In view of upcoming initiatives like the annual pass system and multi-lane free flow (MLFF) tolling, it is critical to address this issue to ensure FASTag authenticity and system reliability, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said in a statement. "To ensure smooth tolling operations and strengthen reporting of 'loose FASTags', NHAI has further streamlined its policy for the Toll Collecting Agencies and Concessionaires to immediately report and blacklist 'loose FASTags', that are also commonly called tag-in-hand," it said. The statement said that sometimes, highway users deliberately do not fix FASTags on the windscreen of vehicles. "Such practices pose operational challenges leading to lane congestion, generation of false chargebacks, misuse in closed-loop tolling systems, causing overall disruption of the Electronic
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has clarified that users' experience on highway toll plazas will not be impacted with the implementation of new norms on FASTag transactions. The clarification came after the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems, introduced a new regulation with regard to delayed transactions due to inactive FASTags at toll plazas. The rules have come into effect on February 17. The NPCI circular aims to ensure that the FASTag transactions are settled within the reasonable time of vehicle passing a toll plaza so that customers are not harassed by late transactions, NHAI said in a statement. "The circular has been issued by NPCI to facilitate resolution of disputes between acquirer bank and issuer bank on FASTag status while vehicle crosses toll plazas," it said. The NHAI further said that all National Highway toll plazas operate on ICD 2.5 protocol which gives ...