Mumbai: The highway of the future will not just be a physical road but a digital one, said Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways, today at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026, being held from September 8–11 at Jio World Centre, Mumbai. The government is now looking to combine FASTag data with automatic number-plate recognition to strengthen the identification and tracking of vehicles on tolled stretches. “This combined system is expected to add an incremental Rs 10,000 crore to toll revenues annually,” Shri Gadkari said.
Addressing a session on the future of mobility finance, he said that India is moving towards fully digital and eventually barrier-free tolling, with a multi-lane free flow (MLFF) system expected to be operational at toll plazas by around February 2027.
“FASTag has already transformed toll collection. Our next step is to ensure that vehicles do not have to stop at toll plazas at all,” he said. In 2021, FASTag was made mandatory. “And today, its results are in front of us. Fast tag penetration on National Highway toll plazas is more than 98%, with more than 13 crore FASTags issued so far” Shri Gadkari added.
Shri Gadkari said FASTag was made mandatory in 2021, accelerating the shift from cash-based payments to electronic toll collection across the national highway network.
Waiting times at toll plazas, which once stretched to about 12 minutes, have fallen by 80-90 per cent following FASTag adoption. He added that FASTag-enabled tolling has saved the country an estimated 71 crore hours annually, translating into an economic value of roughly Rs 68,500 crore a year.
He called for FASTag, UPI and Aadhaar-linked mobility data to be brought together into a single connected ecosystem, describing the ambition as moving from digital payments to intelligent mobility. He also flagged road safety as a priority, citing the high annual toll of road accidents in the country.
“I believe in two key principles: building knowledge through innovation, entrepreneurship, science, technology and research, and then converting that knowledge into wealth,” Shri Gadkari said, adding that technology, backed by appropriate leadership, has the power to transform resources into wealth.
GFF 2026 is organised by the Payments Council of India (PCI), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Fintech Convergence Council (FCC). The conference is supported by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY); the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance; the New, Emerging and Strategic Technology (NEST) Division, the Ministry of External Affairs; Niti Aayog; the Reserve Bank of India (RBI); the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI); the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).
