NHAI to issue 200,000 FASTag by March 2017

Get ready to zip through national highways without stopping as the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) aims to issue 200,000 FASTag by the end of the current financial year (2016-17) after it crossed the 10,000 mark last month.

FASTag offers near non-stop movement of vehicles through user plazas and convenience of cashless payments of toll fee with nationwide inter operable ETC services. FASTag is operational on more than 335 toll plazas on national highways across the country.

NHAI would also fix dedicated lanes for electronic toll collection (ETC) on the national highways by fiscal end, an official statement said.

The sale of FASTag or cashless payment mechanism on toll plazas on highways has crossed 10,000 in June 2016. The monthly transaction through ETC during the month has crossed Rs one crore.

Cashless payment mechanism or FASTag on toll plazas across national highways was rolled out by NHAI on April 25, this year.

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 on 23 toll plazas are available on these two corridors.

In order to promote cashless payment through FASTag, government has allowed NHAI to give 10 per cent 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.

National Highways Authority of India