People travel to cities and states using cars for various purposes. To make their travel more convenient, FASTag was introduced. This system simplifies the toll payment process by enabling automatic money deduction.

Nowadays, FASTag is commonly seen on vehicles. If your vehicle carries a FASTag on its windshield, you should be aware of the new FASTag balance validation rules set by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has provided significant relief with this new FASTag rule, which came into effect on February 17, 2025.

According to Amar Ujala, the NHAI stated, “NPCI has issued this circular to resolve disputes between banks and eliminate misunderstandings regarding the status of FASTag.“

Under the new rule, if your FASTag has been blacklisted for more than one hour, the transaction will not be successful at the toll booth. This also applies if the FASTag was blacklisted just 10 minutes before reaching the toll booth. In such cases, the user may have to pay double the toll amount. However, under these new rules, the driver will have a 70-minute window to update the FASTag status.

Users can receive a toll plaza fine refund if they registered their FASTag less than ten minutes before passing through the toll. If an issuing bank detects an incorrect payment due to a balance shortage or wrongful blacklisting, it must initiate a chargeback process within 15 days.

Additionally, users will incur fees from the toll plaza if FASTag transactions take more than 15 continuous minutes to process after a vehicle passes through.