FASTag

In simple terms, (Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Fastag a small tag at the top-left corner of your vehicle’s windscreen that lets you pass through all toll booths without coming to a halt. Essentially, the foremost purpose of a Fastag is to cut the travel time by eliminating the halt time at a toll booth and there quite a few benefits to it. To begin with private vehicles, people commuting in metro cities like Delhi-NCR or Mumbai and even those who often do intercity commute spend quite some time at toll booths and Fastag helps to save that time. That said, the real monetary benefit is for commercial vehicles that drive long distances or thousands of kilometres. Using a Fastag they don’t need to que up at toll booths and that can save them as much as a day which not only reduces their fuel expenses and labour wage, but also aids to offer services at a competitive rate. Here’s everything you need to know about the Fastag.

1. The Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways has made Fastags mandatory for all vehicles from December 1, 2019 under the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) programme which means from December 1, toll payments will be only through Fastags and vehicles that won’t have Fastags will be charged double the fee to cross the toll booth.
2. The unique number of the RFID Tag affixed on the wind shield of the vehicle is read by the readers fitted in the dedicated ‘ETC’ lanes of plazas. The toll charge as per the class of the vehicle is automatically deducted from the prepaid RFID account of the user which works as an online wallet and can be topped-up just the way we put money in any other online wallet. Moreover, you also get 2.5 per cent cashback till March 2020, all the more reason to go for it.