FASTags Are Compulsory After December 1st: How To Buy FASTags? What Are The Charges? (Details Inside)

To ensure seamless traffic and prevention of congestion at toll plazas, the government has made FASTag compulsory for the vehicles operate on National Highways.

What Is FASTag ?

FASTag is basically a prepaid tag facility that enables a cashless automatic deduction of toll charges at toll plaza.

 That means, while passing through toll plaza , the vehicles need not stop to pay toll charges as the amount automatically gets deducted from FASTag account.

How Does It Work?

The FASTag is a Radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based is affixed on the windscreen of the vehicle.

This facility directly allows the payment of fees from the linked prepaid or savings account. 

According to a Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the users not having a FASTag on their vehicles will be charged double the fee in cash for passing through a FASTag-only lane from 1 December.

How To Get A FASTag For Your Vehicle?

Currently, all the major banks are offering the FASTag payment facilities.

To ensure the automatic deduction of the toll fee from the account, the FASTag is linked to the customer’s savings account.

So that the automatic deduction of fees can happen when the registered vehicle passes through a toll plaza.

All the major banks like State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank are part of the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) initiative rolled out by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Which is working under the guidelines of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and Indian Highways Management Company Limited (IHMCL).

What Are The Charges Involved In Issuance Of FASTag?

According to State Bank of India (SBI) website, they are charging a fee of Rs. 100 (including all applicable taxes) for the issuance of the RFID tag (FASTag) across categories.

Below is the information provided for the charges levied by SBI for issuing the FASTag across different categories of vehicles.

Sr. No.	Vehicle Class No.	Particulars	Security Amount	Minimum Balance
1	4	Car / Jeep / Van/ Tata Ace and similar mini light commercial vehicle	200	100
2	5	Light Commercial Vehicle	300	140
3	6	Three Axle Commercial Vehicles	400	300
4	7	Bus/Truck	400	300
5	12	4 to 6 axle	400	300
6	15	7 or More Axle	400	300
7	16	Heavy Construction Machinery (HCM)/Earth Moving Equipment (EME)	400	300
Source: SBI Fastag

Apart from this, SBI also charges a security amount of Rs. 200-400 for the issuance of RFID tags meant for different classes of vehicles. 

Although this amount is refunded to the customer at the time of closure of the RFID tag account.