ICICI Bank is looking to issue four lakh electronic toll collection (ETC) tags and record three million transactions by March 2017, according to the bank’s MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar. ETC enables vehicles to pay highway tolls electronically without stopping at toll plazas. For making an electronic payment at toll booths, a prepaid Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) tag known as FASTag is affixed on the windscreen of a vehicle. As the vehicle crosses a toll plaza, the information written on the FASTag is captured by a reader installed at the toll plaza and the toll amount will be debited from the motorist’s tag prepaid account created at the central clearing house set-up by the bank. Kochhar said a vehicle with FASTag can use the dedicated lanes on either side of the toll plaza to avoid long queues in the cash lanes of the toll plazas. Till date, ICICI Bank has issued over 30,000 FASTags which are in use. It began the service first in the country on the Mumbai-Vadodara corridor of NH-8 in 2013. Currently, there are 343 ICICI Bank enabled locations across major national highways that cover about 90% of the tolled national highways network. She said the bank is working with road transport and highways ministry, National Highway Authority of India and Indian Highways Management Company Ltd to cover more highways under ETC in the near future.
