The FASTag payments have become easier than before. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already confirmed that any and all authorized payments instruments and methods can now be linked with your FASTag to make it simpler to pay for toll charges at user fee collection plazas on all national highways in India. This means that irrespective of where you may have purchased the FASTag from, you will be able to link with any mobile wallet or a UPI payment method for payments and recharging the FASTag account. This means apps such as Google Pay, BHIM, Paytm, PhonePe and others will be able to help you recharge your FASTag. Until now, you had the option of either paying via the built-in wallet facility that was limited to the vendor you bought the FASTag from, or by linking it to your savings account, in case the FASTag was issued by a bank. This should provide massive relief to users ahead of the January 15 deadline that makes FASTags mandatory for payment of toll on national highways.
At the time of writing this, Google Pay is already offering the ICICI FASTag Recharge option on the app.
“In order to further broad base this system by allowing more payment choices for the customers, as well as for fostering competition among the system participants, all authorized payment systems …shall from now be permitted for linking with the FASTags,” says the RBI in an official statement.
Also Read | If The FASTag For Your Car Is Not Read by Scanners at Toll Plazas, Your Trip is Free
At this time, you can either buy a FASTag on Amazon.in or via banks including HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank as well as the Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm Payments Bank. The wallet facility for the FASTag is then managed by the bank you purchased the FASTag from, and you couldn’t manage and recharge it via any other payment method.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) now allows users to recharge their FASTags via the BHIM app. Till now, the FASTags could mostly be topped-up via the portal of the bank which had issued the FASTag, or via the official FASTag app for Android, if you had purchased this on Amazon. The new digital payment functionality in the BHIM app comes ahead of the January 15 deadline which makes FASTags mandatory for transactions at toll plazas on all national highways across India.
Also Read | FASTags Are Now Mandatory From January 15; Here is What to do if You Need to Buy One
“Customers can now recharge their FASTag account hassle-free through BHIM UPI enabled mobile applications just by logging into the BHIM app,” says the NCPI in an official statement. If you have purchased a FASTag from any of the issuing banks, here is how you can now add more money into the FASTag account, perhaps ahead of your upcoming road trips.
• Login to your BHIM UPI App
• Select Send Option on home screen
• Enter NETC FASTag UPI ID as—netc.VehicleNumber@BankUPIHandle here, the bank UPI handle will be the FASTag issuing bank)
• Click to Verify
• Enter the recharge amount
• Enter the pin to authenticate the transaction
• You will receive an SMS confirming the transaction to your FASTag wallet
The banks that currently offer FASTags include HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank as well as the Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm Payments Bank. But quite often, the website or app from which the issuing bank allows you to recharge your FASTag tends to be clunky and not very intuitive. The ability to add money to your FASTag via the BHIM app surely makes things simpler. However, at this time, there is no separate FASTag recharge option available in the BHIM app—though having that would perhaps make things even simpler.
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