The South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL) is rolling out a comprehensive tap-and-go payment system across all toll plazas on the country’s national road network, marking the most significant change to toll collection in years.
The initiative, which kicked off on 1 December, will see all plaza locations equipped with contactless payment terminals, in compliance with directives from the Payment Association of South Africa (PASA).
“This solution has been designed to accept tap-enabled Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) bank cards as well as digital wallets linked to these bank cards,” said Gert Botha, SANRAL’s Toll Network Manager.
However, the new system comes with some drawbacks. Unlike offline card readers, the tap-and-go terminals require online processing to validate each transaction with banks, significantly impacting traffic flow speeds.
Previously, SANRAL’s card-only lanes could process up to 750 vehicles per hour. The new online validation requirement is expected to approximately halve that processing capacity, potentially creating longer queues during peak travel periods.
To address this bottleneck, SANRAL has made the strategic decision to convert existing card-only lanes at major plazas into dedicated tag lanes, which can handle up to 1,000 vehicles per hour.
The affected plazas include high-traffic locations on the N3 Mariannhill, N17 Gosforth, N17 Dalpark, and N1 Grasmere routes. Card-only signage at these locations will be temporarily crossed out during the transition period.
“SANRAL advises card-only lane users to upgrade to SANRAL tags as soon as possible to minimise inconvenience,” Botha said, particularly emphasizing the importance ahead of the busy festive season travel period.
The agency has also addressed lingering concerns about the electronic toll collection system, reassuring motorists that “funds deposited are ring-fenced for future toll transactions and will not be used to recover historic debt incurred from the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project.”
The rollout isn’t starting from scratch. SANRAL’s concessionaires N3 Toll Concession (N3TC) and Trans African Concessions (TRAC) have been operating tap-and-go systems since December 2024. Bakwena N1/N4, another concessionaire, is currently implementing the technology across its routes.
EMV bank cards, which use microchip technology to create unique encrypted codes for each transaction, offer enhanced security compared to traditional magnetic stripe cards and are virtually impossible to counterfeit.
Despite the push toward electronic payments, SANRAL recommends that motorists carry cash as a backup option in case devices go offline due to technical problems.
The comprehensive upgrade represents SANRAL’s effort to modernise South Africa’s toll infrastructure while ensuring compliance with national payment standards, though the success of the initiative will largely depend on how quickly motorists adapt to the new systems and upgrade to electronic tags.
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