The usage of FASTag is mandatory in India. The government of India has been taking several initiatives to promote digital payments in the country. FASTag is one of them.

The Modi government introduced it to enable online payments at toll booths.

The government initially gave some time to switch to FASTag. Later, it became mandatory in India.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highway introduced the FASTag in 2017 to ease payments at toll plazas.

FASTag is a Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID). An RFID sticker is fixed to the vehicle’s windshield. While crossing the toll plaza, a reader at the booth scans the card and processes the toll payment automatically.

As the payment is made automatically, you need not wait at the toll booth to make a payment. Thus, vehicles can be moved without waiting for a long time at toll plazas.

Earlier, they had had to wait in a long-standing queue to make toll payments in cash at the toll booth. Thus, FASTag eases the toll payment.

If you want to check your FASTag balance, you can do it in the following ways:

To check your FASTag account balance with banks, visit the bank’s website to which your FASTag account has been linked. Log in to the FASTag portal using your credentials.  Click on the view balance option to check the balance.

If you want to check the balance using NHAI prepaid wallet, download the My FASTag App from Google Play Store or App Store. Log in to it with your credentials to check the balance in your FASTag account.

Register for the FASTag service to get notified through SMS every time an amount gets deducted from your account. It will also notify you about toll payments, recharge confirmations, etc. Thus, you can know your FASTag account balance.

Image Credit: Govt of India, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fastag-logo.png