In a major boost for New Delhi’s long-term objective of making toll payments at highway plazas cashless and hassle-free, latest data sourced by ET reveals that over a third of all toll payments made at highway booths during September was electronically activated through radio frequency identification stickers, commonly known as FASTag Introduced by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway (MoRTH) in December 2016 during demonetisation, these stickers are generally deployed on the vehicles' windshields to enable commuters roll out toll payments on the move without halting at the collection booths.The technology, since its pilot testing in 2014, has long been pegged by the government as a solution to both decongest the toll plazas by making payments seamless while also reducing cash transactions at these centers.As per data sourced by ET from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), in September an average of 9.67 lakh transactions were processed daily through FASTags, which is 34% of all NHAI toll transactions in the month; an almost twofold increase in penetration rate since November last year when penetration level was at 18%. Tamil Nadu Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh were the top three states from where the highest volumes of these transactions originated. Since the inception of the program, over 56 crore FASTag payments amounting to about Rs 13,500 crore have been processed till the end of September. NPCI data also revealed that the number of vehicles deployed with FASTag has reached 60 lakh across the country and 529 tolls have been enabled to accept this payment mode.As per a Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) notification earlier this year, all highway plazas across the country have been asked to set up one mandatory dedicated FASTag lane by 1 December. MoRTH Minsiter Nitin Gadkari had also said earlier that the government is mulling over expanding the coverage of the technology by making FASTag an option for payment at petrol pumps and parking spaces as well."Now, FASTags will be available at petrol outlets and we plan to make it available throughout the country soon. Plans are also afoot that these could also be utilized by consumers for buying petrol and for parking facilities," Gadkari had said in January. The payment technology was launched under the National Electronic Fund Collection (NETC) program by NHAI, NPCI and Indian Highway Management Company (IHMCL).The NETC system at present has 10 acquiring and 23 member banks who can issue these tags and manage the payment accounts. The payments are automatically debited with a lag of 10 minutes from the bank account linked with the FASTag.