The FASTag project is administered by the National Highways Authority of India, in partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The payments for tolls are directly made through a linked prepaid account, without the need to pay in cash or wait in queues for long. FASTags are currently offered by about 10 entities, which include ICICI Bank, State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank. Among these, eight are also in the business of acquiring and operating toll plazas.
ICICI, however, seems to have a lion’s share of the market. The bank processes almost two-thirds of the Rs4 billion worth of toll payments that happen every month through the solution, said Sudipta Roy, group head (unsecured lending, cards and payment solutions) at ICICI Bank.
“We crossed 1 million FASTags milestone last month. The country as a whole has a total of 2.5 million tags, out of which one million are ours,” Roy said.
Even though the bank has dominance in the market currently, the competition is heating up. The likes of Paytm are issuing an equal number of cards on a daily basis as SBI, one of the biggest players, according to sources. Roy, however, said the bank is not worried about competition as it rests on robust volumes due to its collaboration with more than 10,000 transporters.
“The frequency of transporters is more than the frequency of a personal car. We have a disproportionate share when it comes to transporters, including all large transporters and bus fleet owners,” said Roy. The bank is also targeting individual car-owners as it has inked pacts with more than 2,500 dealerships across the country to deploy tags on new cars. ICICI Bank is also in the process of coming up with an e-commerce strategy where it wants to partner with e-commerce sites and allow people to order these tags online.
The bank said it is committed to Indian Highway Management Company Limited, the firm working under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways that oversees the FASTag project.
To read the full story, Subscribe Now at just Rs 249 a month
Already a subscriber? Log in
Subscribe To BS Premium
₹249
Renews automatically
₹1699₹1999
Opt for auto renewal and save Rs. 300 Renews automatically
₹1999
What you get on BS Premium?
-
Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.
-
Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.
Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.
Preferential invites to Business Standard events.
Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.
Need More Information - write to us at assist@bsmail.in