ICICI Bank crosses 1 mn FASTags milestone, puts e-toll in fast lane

Last month, ICICI Bank issued its one millionth FASTag and crossed an important benchmark, as the private bank reiterated its dominance over the government’s electronic highway toll collection project. The tags, which work on radio frequency, are issued by major banks and non-bank players like Paytm.
 
The FASTag project is administered by the National Highways Authority of India, in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The payments for tolls are directly made through a linked prepaid account, without the need to pay in cash or wait in queues for long. FASTags are currently offered by about 10 entities, which include ICICI Bank, State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank. Among these, eight are also in the business of acquiring and operating toll plazas.
 
ICICI, however, seems to have a lion’s share of the market. The bank processes almost two-thirds of the Rs4 billion worth of toll payments that happen every month through the solution, said Sudipta Roy, group head (unsecured lending, cards and payment solutions) at ICICI Bank.

 

Roy told Business Standard that the bank was the sole operator of the project from 2012 to 2016. The project was then given to NPCI to manage settlements and converted into a multi-bank model. ICICI Bank was operating 350 highways back then, even as the bank continues to operate 210 highways even now, giving it a 50 per cent market share in acquiring the business.
 
“We crossed 1 million FASTags milestone last month. The country as a whole has a total of 2.5 million tags, out of which one million are ours,” Roy said.
 
Even though the bank has dominance in the market currently, the competition is heating up. The likes of Paytm are issuing an equal number of cards on a daily basis as SBI, one of the biggest players, according to sources. Roy, however, said the bank is not worried about competition as it rests on robust volumes due to its collaboration with more than 10,000 transporters.

 
“The frequency of transporters is more than the frequency of a personal car. We have a disproportionate share when it comes to transporters, including all large transporters and bus fleet owners,” said Roy. The bank is also targeting individual car-owners as it has inked pacts with more than 2,500 dealerships across the country to deploy tags on new cars. ICICI Bank is also in the process of coming up with an e-commerce strategy where it wants to partner with e-commerce sites and allow people to order these tags online.
 
The bank said it is committed to Indian Highway Management Company Limited, the firm working under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways that oversees the FASTag project.