Road to future: you can flash a ring to pay toll

Frequent highway users may soon be able to pay their toll-charges and other expenses at restaurants and petrol-pumps on the road-trip using a government pre-paid card that may come with slick options of wearable devices — rings or watches.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) plans to launch a pre-paid card as payment mechanism at all its toll plazas in order to encourage the adoption of digital payments on the highways.

In addition to toll payments, these pre-paid cards, as conceptualised, can be used at restaurants and wayside amenities within the highway ecosystem, and even outside the highway ecosystem at parking lots, fuel stations, metro rail systems, buses, and other places in cities, said a government official. Such cards are called common mobility cards.

These cards can be waved against the devices at point of sales machines or validators. These may also come in the form of wearable devices like rings and watches, from which payment can be made.

These pre-paid instruments will be different from FASTags, the RFID tags that the NHAI has already launched. FASTags, for instance, are physically attached to the vehicles. However, payment for FASTags also involve a pre-paid mode through various financial institutions such as ICICI Bank, SBI, Axis Bank, IDBI Bank, and small finance bank Equitas and Paytm.

For the proposed pre-paid cards, the highway regulator has already had discussions with the National Payments Corporation of India, set up under the RBI’s guidance, to handle the various payment systems.

The proposed pre-paid cards will compete with wallet systems such as Paytm, bank debit cards, and, possibly, pre-paid cards issued by various metro rails and bus operators, AirtelMoney and MobiKwik.

However, with a ready pool of 40-50 lakh daily commuters across the national highways spread throughout the country, the NHAI feels it will have a distinct edge over its competitors in offering such a common mobility card.

The national highway network is spread over 1 lakh km now, with the government planning to widen it to almost 2 lakh km over the next few years.

While the card is yet to be named, a proposal with the broad contours of its launch has been sent by the NHAI to the Road Transport and Highways Ministry for its consideration.

“The proposal has been conceptualised, and the exact modalities of how it will be implemented are under finalisation by the Road Transport and Highways Ministry,” said a government official.

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