Touch n Go’s RFID payment system is not something new – it has actually been around a long time, first introduced as a public pilot way back in September 2018. It was then rolled out to all open toll highways in January 2020. Technically still under a ‘trial period’ (words from the mouth of works minister Fadillah Yusof), the use of RFID got a lot more exposure when PLUS implemented the system at its tolls from Jan 15, 2022.
I am a frequent user of the NKVE highway and my primary choice of toll payment method is RFID because I like its ‘hands-free’ usage but it’s disheartening to see long queues at RFID lanes up until today. It’s been more than 3 months since Jan 15, these long queues still exist.
Initially PLUS apologised for the traffic congestion during to its RFID rollout and assigned customer service assistants (CSAs) at all 158 RFID lanes across 74 toll plazas to assist customers who are stuck at lanes. Using portable detection devices, the CSAs will help stuck cars.
Three months later, these CSAs are nowhere to be found. I once waited more than 5 minutes while a stubborn Toyota Fortuner continued to reverse and drive forward countless times, hoping for the RFID gate to finally detect his tag. In the end, he gave up after a long queue built up behind him.
Curiously, not a single driver of the 15-20 or so cars queueing behind honked at him, including myself. It’s like we didn’t blame him and were all resigned to the fact that we just have to deal with this every day.
Because highways like NKVE operate based on a closed toll system where you pay based on where you enter and exit, a car that enters using the RFID lane cannot exit with a SmartTAG or Touch n Go lane.
When a car gets stuck at the RFID lane, RFID users have no choice but to join a super long queue, just like the viral photo of NKVE’s Jalan Duta toll plaza back in February. You can see the SmartTAG lanes are empty, but the cars cannot use them.
Well, I suppose they could, if they are willing to pay the maximum toll charge as a penalty because their entry was not technically recorded on the TnG/SmartTAG system.
The only thing they can do if an RFID lane is stuck is to use another RFID lane, but a lot of toll plazas only have one RFID lane, so in practice there is actually no backup. The rare ones with two RFID lanes often have them spread apart far from each other, making it unsafe to switch lanes. And often, queues build up at both lanes anyway, so it is hard to merge into an existing queue.
PLUS issued a press release explaining that it was determined that during the peak hours between 8am to 8.59am, there were a number of cases of drivers with insufficient balance attempting to reload their TnG eWallet at the boom gates, resulting in the congestion. PLUS apologised for any inconvenience caused and said it will help guide customers to park their vehicles at a safe location away from traffic in front of the RFID lane so they can reload their TnG eWallet.
If this is the main reason for cars getting stuck at RFID lanes, the solution is really simple. TnG should just allow the car to pass through the toll and go into a negative balance. Allow it for just one time, so the user’s TnG eWallet account can be reloaded in a safe location. There are a few situations where I can think of which can make it hard for on the spot reloads. A lady might be driving a car that has an RFID tag linked to the husband’s TnG eWallet account, for example.
Display a message at the LED screen at the toll lane to let the user know of the negative balance, and push a notification to the user’s phone as well. Now, if the user still does not reload their wallet, then you can bar them from the next toll payment.
If you think about it, the risk is quite minimal. You need to go through an e-KYC process when you sign up for an TnG eWallet account and your account is tied to your phone number anyway. What is the user going to do, keep on buying new simcards? Might as well use the money to pay the toll.
Turning on auto reload is a recommended solution, but some people might not want to do this – cashflow might be one reason. And it’s clear that they will continue to not want to do this, because this baki kurang issue keeps happening.
TnG should do the noble thing and just take on the risk of non-payment of just 1 toll charge for the convenience of many motorists stuck behind the errant user. The rest of us are paying toll for faster travel, it really does not make sense being delayed at the toll plazas because of this on a daily basis.
TnG could even take it one step further and allow users to pay their toll monthly like a postpaid bill. If you trust a user enough to disburse a personal loan with the new GOPinjam feature, surely allowing the user to pay toll charges using a monthly bill is not a big issue?
PLUS sent out a press release today that it anticipates 2 million highway customers during this year’s balik kampung period and it is prepared to field a total of 1,500 CSA officers at all 94 toll plazas from 29 April to 9 May to ensure smooth traveling through the toll plazas.
This feels like an inefficient use of human resources and those CSA officers should off celebrating Raya instead. It could be a good idea to use this balik kampung period to test out the ‘Pay Later’ or ‘Reload Later’ system. What do you think, TnG? Could you make it work?
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
TnG RFID is obviously a not well-thought-out solution. How do they expect the rakyat to not deride its implementation as a typical Malaysian tidak-apa incompetent effort, when even things that can be afterthoughts are not even considered? The implementation is disjointed, it’s inefficient, the tech itself is hardly any better than SmartTag but with significantly more disadvantages. All those involved, at all levels, probably only thought about lining their own pockets and “buat kerja senang” rather than delivering a viable cohesive solution.
50% interest for Pay Later. this is the right way,
Bagi polis isu saman kpd yg buat jalan sesak
A system in only as foolproof as the users and this just goes to show TNG RFID system provider had overestimated the intelligence of regular Malaysian users.
RFID stands for “Regularly F…ed In Depth”..oh my gaud…thats why it cannot work properly..dont you dudes understand? You need Sarmat rocket nuke science?
So you expect RFID to go negative balance for you to pass? How much then?
If set negative RM10 you will complain why not -RM50 once you reach that limit.
So if set negative RM50 then you will complain why not -RM100 once you reach that limit.
So then are you still going to complain once you reach -RM 1000? When are you going learn to pay up or never at all? Learn to budget your trips and fix your life finances first, not expect your RFID to be constantly be in the red.
By the time RFID is perfected, Vladimir Putin would have launched his Sarmat ICBM at Europe triggering the nuclear winter.
So solution is perfect from the start. What’s important is they must iterate and optimise. However, it seems that aspect is a little lacking and it’s not just on TNG’s part but also the toll operators’ as well.
As point out in lowyat dot net at the very beginning of the real trial. The design is completely flawed. I don’t know how any qualified person can say it is a well designed system….. Anyone with reasonable competence could see it would break down in this way. And this was pointed out very early.
How is this design flawed when it is used in virtually all mid to high end condo parking system and nobody complaints even when it sometimes failed? Seriously Malaysian are just to demanding and petty but stupid at the same time.
Why is it so difficult to have sufficient balance in the first place anyway…it’s not like you have to go to war to reload…you create your own problem and yet you want to blame others…it was the same when smartag was first introduced…and besides it’s not rocket science to check whether you have enough balance or not…
Why is it so difficult to display the balance at the toll booth panel like what they do with the conventional card and smart tag? Why not also alert the user with flashing display when balance is below RM5?
You look at your smartphone hundreds of times a day yet why is it so difficult to click on your Ewallet app to check balance, heck Ewallet itself has low balance warning function to flash a message on your front page how is that more complicated that viewing on an LCD board which you probably don’t do any way?
True
I would be on alert if balance under 10
Top op je mesti akan pakai punya
The tech works, its the implementation that fails. I’ve used RFID countless times at Kesas, both ways and SPRINT, both ways and have not encountered any problems. slowing down when I reach the booth. I get problems at LDP toll towards Sunway and 90% will have problems and so do others but going into Puchong via RFID booth is okay. The problems lie with the so called engineers/technician who install the reader. They do not have a set location or direction so its always hit and miss, plus the tester will stand in areas that cars will not go like too near the edge. This happens with Smart Tag readers too as some tolls have perfect location but some dunno where until you put your hand out with the smart tag to Tag the reader. Our quality standards fail although we pay more to consultants and companies that are doing the installation, in MY the company getting the contract and the firm installing is totally different, hence the fark-ups and qualities. YOU Pay Peanuts, get…
It should be name Go Now Pay Later!
Should impose a penalty fees of rm30 for every insufficient balance
Agreed. Even a lower charge is acceptable. As long as there is fine
Good idea…
I was once a pilot trial user for this RFID system. I no longer use RFID now due to the reasons above and my new cars do not have RFID stickers as I continue to use my older SmartTag units for toll payment. Save my time and sanity on the road as I can always switch to the normal TnG road when the SmartTag lane is jammed.
RFID also don’t show what your wallet balance. You’re just depends on your Lucky I guess
The e wallet does show one’s balance, can be used to check at anytime, even before one reaches the toll
T&G nak rakyat punya duit.. masuk FD dia upfront to generate income & revenue. Kalau implement pakai dulu baru bayar macam postpaid, sure revenue dia kurang. Tengok servis lain macam Astro, Broadband semua upfront payment.
win win situation, u get interest from there too
I drive a same car, going thru same RFID lane(PLUS) daily. i can say no better since 1st day implementation. inconsistent acceptance and gantry open up, worst than smart tag lane(tot at least on par?!); slow response of person in charge when there’s failure, and long queue. How long more shall we stay with this, yet talking about RFID fast flow without gantry in next few years. come on..
The problem with “insufficient balance” is due to the slow response of auto reload. It take sometime for the auto reload to be activated. The simple solution is to place the sensor farther away from the gentry bar to give sufficient time for the auto reload to be triggered. But the people at T&G and PLUS don’t seem to be interested in solving the problems.
not a good suggestion, just set higher limit for your auto reload
Its obvious there is something fundamentally wrong with MyFRID. It has not brought any improvements over Smart Tag. My view is that it should be disbanded and smart tag improved.
TnG is operating like a greedy bank. Happy to take your money upfront and store it, generate interest income and yet cannot spare a few bucks to facilitate negative balance. It should be mandated by law that all stored value or deposits received must generate interest for the account (TnG, TNB, telcos, etc).
Honestly speaking, allowing negative balance of a single toll charge will do nothing to help the situation but merely delay it another transaction. These people do not think like us, they don’t understand the value of time, and are perfectly happy going around with RM5 in their wallet. Their whole life is made out of excuses and laments of ‘takdir and rezeki’.
Do it the way the westerners do, the solution is right in front of you and yet we are trying to find stopgap solutions to a problem that we keep bringing onto ourselves. Mandate gov produced reg plates, visual reg plate recognition, linked to an account which must be paid online within a few days else legal action by the DOT will be served. Imagine all the money used for TNG readers, boom gates, TNG personnel, etc being saved and all it takes is a couple of cameras, not forgetting the productivity hours saved from driving through at full speed.
Yes. And those syiok sendiri idiots with unreadable fancy number plates will immediately get flagged by such an automated system and get slapped with a non-compoundable fine that requires court time. Kill two birds with one stone.
Thoroughly excellent suggestions which I wish would be implemented…but wait…first need to form a committee to figure out which crony(ies) need contracts for:-
i) standardised number plates
ii) license plate reader
iii) IT system integration with existing payment network
iv) redesign, supply and installation of gantry system (either as one or 3 separate contracts)
Special subcommittee to determine how to make the rakyat pay top dollar and deliver a 3rd rate solution in 5-10 years.
A tad cynical maybe, but is the reality in this country.
RFID totally useless system as I always have sufficient balance. The toll RFID sensor totally failed badly and lousy system. Sometimes can detect and sometime cannot, what a really bullshit I dared to say so.
Yes yes…I support this comment..not because unsufficient balance.but the system not detect..so how…everybody blame us..
The car in front of me tried a few times and yet failed but was perfectly OK when it tried a 2nd lane. It happened to me when came to my turn. I only wanted to try once and off I go to 2nd lane and went thru.
So is it our RFID or the RFID detector?
Bro, why the hell do you even go to highway toll if you can’t pay it? I can see cases where people don’t have enough money in their TnG card, okay that’s acceptable. Now we have Tng RFID and we can topup our TnG card using phone that has NFC Features. Alright, even better.
And then you’re telling me that you can’t spend few minutes to topup your TnG cards using your phone, which is directly connected to your bank and you can topup your stuff.
You’re literally making a big deal out of nothing. Think for long term la, people will abuse this debt system till the end of time. It’s expected.
if it were so easy why are there still baki kurang cars stuck? it is a big deal.
Pay later , means no pay at all, haha . Impose penalty is way better to prevent ppl forgot and smoother the flow
The problem with “insufficient balance” is due to the slow response of auto reload. It take sometime for the auto reload to be activated. The simple solution is to place the sensor farther away from the gentry bar to give sufficient time for the auto reload to be triggered. But the people at T&G and PLUS don’t seem to be interested in solving the problems.
the auto reload kicks in when the balance drops below a certain threshold. thus it would have been done at the last transaction before the toll payment. so your theory does not make sense.
Bravo Paul Tan. A very thoughtfull article you posted here. Fully agree on Go Now Pay Later as it can save a lot of precious time to the rest of other user. The authority should implement this fast to smoothen the traffic flow with the ever increasing number of vehicle on the road.
I do agree with Paul’s suggestion of allowing cars through with a negative balance. Telcos and other merchants usually offer merchant credit, I don’t see why TNG can’t do the same (e.g. small RM30 credit).
However, a MAJOR investment needed NOW is to make more if not all lanes be RFID ready. I highly doubt it’s a big investment and there is no excuse to all parties involved since there is intention to move away from legacy systems.
The long queues and the need to wrestle to the right lane puts people off from switching. It’s a hassle for those already using RFID! It still baffles me why toll operators still split these lanes up, it forces people to cross lanes which can be dangerous, sometimes impossible. It /seems/ orderly but the truth is, us drivers are not orderly creatures.
That’s right. The problem is the limited RFID lanes. And if you enter with RFID, you can’t use any other lane to exit. Unlike SmartTAG which you can always revert to normal TnG lanes.
Heaven forbid you enter the highway with RFID and the RFID exit in the middle of the night at some ulu place does not work , what then? Use other lane and get charged full amount?
SmartTAG/TnG is still the better system with fallback if smartTAG doesn’t work. Even if you are stuck at a SmartTAG lane due to device failure, you can still tap the TnG card. There is no such option with RFID. If you are stuck, means you are stuck.
2 things. 1). If there is a call congestion at the RFID lane due to the system not working, what do you do? Wait until the fix it? The obvious solution to have a backup lane like Smartag is still missing. 2) The idea to deploy 1,500 staff to help is mind boggling, at huge cost and depriving its staff the opportunity to celebrate the festivities. PLUS should get it’s team to deliberate more and come up with a solution that benefits all RFID users, don’t just issue an apology and get away with it.
I think T n Go can integrate their Go Pinjam with RFID. If your balance not enough,automatically Go Pinjam will kick in with 36% interest. Haha.
If the label is not fixed correctly, many find it doesn’t work. so could anyone enlighten me where are the official centres where I can have the label properly fitted on my Perodua Ativa. Thank you.
I used RFID all the time for its greater convenience but the lanes leading to the RFID booth are not clearly demarcated. This caused bottleneck among motorists deciding which lane to take. Besides, the RFID signage, the font on a white background, are hardle legible from a distance. TnGo should consider painting large signages on the roof where permissble for legibility and/or or have a billboard to direct motorists to the correct lane 100 metres upon approaching a toll booth. I used PayDirect linked my TnG wallet to mitigate the hassle of reload.
Toll charge is part of services provided by highway companies based on their services offered. My question is why should I provide pre-payment to the services that I have yet to incur? Secondly, with my money tied to the highway company, shouldnt they also pay us interest/ profit sharing as we are providing soft operating expense loan to them? In other countries eg Melbourne Australia, toll charges are deducted from your credit card (the one you authorised) as you go through the gantry. why should we be asked to deposit RM100 or RM200 in our TnG card or ewallet for the subsequent toll charges in the future? Its like paying your new shirt and trousers way before you buys them?
Link your TnG card, RFID into TnG e-wallet, activate your GO+ Balance, transfer all deposit into GO+ Balance, remain ewallet balance at RM0.00. Receive 1.54% p.a
This can solve your problem, unless you wan to top up every time u reach the toll.
I must admit that our toll system might be bad, but this is the system, like it or not, we still have to use.
By the way, how much interest you were asking ? Deposit RM100 into TnG monthly, getting 3% per annum according to FD rate ?
Let’s see how much hates I can get
Touch n’Go not publicly listed la…not subject to oversight what. More than 20 years milking this cash cow, all that interest not being paid to depositors, they are definitely not going to kill this golden goose. If there ever was a case for My Competition Commission to bust, this would be it. Imagine having visa/MC wave facility at the toll booth. Problem solved for us. They (highway concessionaires) of course don’t want to pay the merchant fees.
That’s a brilliant idea. I hope they would enable Quick payment for toll reloads as well. I once got stuck at Sg. 2 toll because I was told by TnGo customer service that RFID supports Quick payment. It didn’t work! It was my first time trying out RFID.
That’s a brilliant idea. I hope they would enable Quick payment for toll reloads as well. I once got stuck at Sg. 2 toll because I was told by TnGo customer service that RFID supports Quick payment. It didn’t work! It was my first time trying out RFID.
There was nothing wrong with smartag n touch n go. Just stop using the rafid odiot
It was just in Feb that there were cases of TNG ewallet being hacked. You can Google it easily. I immediately disabled my auto reload and removed my credit card information from the app after that
Follow hk octopus card where user have to pay 50 dollar as deposit.. any short, just deduct from the deposit.
There should be mandatory quality of service for toll operatots. Failure of system should not exceed 1 / 1000. Only then will toll operators improve their performance.
Whatever works for Singapore or any other country which has implemented the gateless payment, which just follow them.
Nevertheless, we already know a systemic change is required. Standardised plate number, interlinked citizen database system, etc. Or even better, abolish toll altogether.
Unless these are adopted, the system will always be subjected to abuse no matter what new improvements we propose.
When it is GLC business or vvip business there is no such thing they will pay first (-ve credit). They prefer squeeze you upfront and without care for the queue.
macam mana pay later…. lps jadi tak nak pay… PTPTN dah example… lps enjoy tak nak bayar..
It was last month, when my mind were blank and got “sangkut” at PLUS highway RFID lane. Without thinking, i changed to SMART tag lane and exit the tol.
The gate opened and i went through. Once passed through….. i thought shit….. I kena max charged?? Can i entered the tol again?
At the end, PLUS don’t charge me a single cent and i use the road for free, but i would never do that again.
This negative balance thing has already been implemented 20 years ago in Singapore’s own MRT card system. I don’t know why it can’t be implemented here. The had a maximum negative balance of SGD20 if not mistaken, which is the actually the deposit for the card. So even if you use up the SGD20, the company still doesn’t lose money.
So what happens once you ran out of that deposit? Do you complain why SMRT does not have higher limit and hence you don’t get stuck? This is typical Malaysian problem of doing things last minute.
I remember during the pilot phase this feature was available, because I had used it once or twice. Not sure why they didn’t choose to activate it this time.
I agreed that PLUS has to engage a professional to study and improve on the RFID lane issues. While it is imposing something good to the motorist but on the other hand it is creating more problems eg long ques to them including myself . Better not to Intro RFID with only 1 lane or 2 lanes but far apart .
I think we should crowdfund a class action suit against TNG and whoever is behind this farcical implementatio. Maybe by having a court appointment, companies would think twice about half baked approaches. We need to make them learn a lesson or two.
Perhaps to counter that, TNG should have class action lawsuit against users that contantly kurang baki but shameless to be part of a crowdfund class action lawsuit against TNG, hmm?
Typical Gomen mindset….buat sesuatu tak habis fikir. I worked in Africa pun tolls are gateless and are interlinked to either credit card or bank account and car registration number (to prevent fake license plate).
Idiots up there will not consider your GOOD suggestion PaulTan. They dont even understand your idea of paying LATER.