FASTag New Rule – The government has made a major change regarding FASTag, which has come into effect from today. According to the new rules, additional charges will be levied on users who make late payments through FASTag, users with low balance or blacklisted FASTag.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways have released some important changes to the FASTag ecosystem, aimed at streamlining toll payments, reducing disputes and preventing fraud.
What is the new FASTag rule?
The new FASTag rule will be implemented from February 17. Under the new rules, if the FASTag remains active for more than 60 minutes before the vehicle crosses the toll and remains inactive for 10 minutes after crossing the toll, the transaction will be rejected. This means that the toll payment will not be possible. The system will reject such payments by writing “Error code 176”.
These FASTag users will have to pay higher charges.
Along with this, changes have been made in the chargeback process and cooling period as well as transaction cancellation rules to simplify toll payments and reduce disputes. According to the new guidelines, if a toll transaction is made more than 15 minutes after the vehicle passes through the toll reader, then FASTag users may have to pay additional charges.
FASTag transactions increase to 382 million in December
According to the latest data from NPCI, the number of FASTag transactions in December increased by 6 percent to Rs 38.2 crore from Rs 35.9 crore in November. In addition, the value of FASTag transactions increased by 9 percent to Rs 6,642 crore from Rs 6,070 crore in November.
