Back in October Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari announced that FASTags will become mandatory for all vehicles from December 1 this year. This essentially means users of vehicle with four wheels and more have only have a few days left to get one if they plan to travel on the national highways. FASTag is mandatory for all private and commercial vehicles equipped with this contactless payment system for paying the necessary road usage charge at toll plazas on national highways (NH) across India.
Many users must have been wondering what a FASTag is and how it works. Here goes an explainer.
A FASTag is essentially a tag that you attach to the windshield of your vehicle, from the inside. It is Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) enabled and is linked with the registration details of your motor vehicle. As you cross through any toll plaza, there will be dedicated lanes with FASTag readers that will detect and read your RFID and deduct the necessary toll fee from the prepaid balance and the user can continue with his journey through the toll plaza unhindered.
This helps, as the user doesn’t have to stop, interact with a human being at a toll plaza or pay cash. In case a vehicle that doesn’t have a FASTag enters the dedicated FASTag lane, it will be charged double of the normal toll rate at that particular toll plaza. This rule is applicable across 524 toll plazas across the country.
Now to be able to use the FASTag, the user needs to buy a FASTag for the vehicle. It can be purchased from certain toll plazas across the country by producing identification and the vehicle registration documents. Alternatively, it can be purchased from Amazon.in or approach certain banks for these FASTags. Banks such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm Payments Bank offer it currently.
The advantage of buying the FASTag from the bank where you have your savings or salary account is that they can link it to your bank account which allows easy recharges later. The prices vary from vendor to vendor though. While it costs Rs 500 from PayTM for a light passenger vehicle, the same FASTag costs Rs 400 from HDFC Bank. Vendors often add various cashback schemes and offers with the purchase making the price different.
When it comes to recharging the FASTag, you can do so from your bank account or digital wallet. As an alternative, users can also download the My FASTag app (free for Android on the Google Play Store) and recharge your FASTag via the unified payments interface (UPI) interface there.
