After initiating National Electronic Toll Collection programme through FASTag across the country from next week, the Centre is all set to use the same mode for parking fee collections at airports across the country. Sources in Road Transport Ministry said that it is being also worked on as how the same tags could be used in for multiple benefits including refueling of the vehicles.

The National Highway Authority of India on Monday introduced on a pilot project for using the FASTag for parking purpose at Hyderabad airport. The pilot project has been launched in two phases, the first being a controlled pilot testing, wherein only ICICI tags would be used, and second phase of pilot project for using FASTags for parking purposes at Hyderabad airport shall cover all other issuer bank tags.

"This has been done to ensure the benefits of FASTag beyond tolling. Conceptualised as FASTag 2.0, it covers parking payments, fuel payments, etc. After Hyderabad, the project will be launched at the Delhi airport. Other banks like SBI, Axis, HDFC and IDFC are also in talks with airports in Mumbai, Bengaluru and few of the malls to launch FASTag 2.0," said a NHAI official.

The National Electronic Toll Collection programme, the flagship initiative of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, has been implemented on pan India basis across national highway toll plazas. It has given a major fillip to the Digital India initiative by converting cash toll payments to electronic and brought in an enhanced transparency in entire tolling ecosystem, the Ministry said.

" Journey of FASTag 2.0 has many exciting use cases like fuel payments, enforcement (e-challan) payments, access management at offices and residence.  GST council has also mandated FASTag for all commercial vehicles which would be generating an e-way bill from April 1, 2020. This integration will be a big boost to GSTN as it would help in identifying the leakages with respect to non-issuance/ misreporting of E-way bill," said the official.