Here’s some big news regarding highway toll payment. The Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) has instructed PLUS to implement ‘Account Based Transaction’ (ABT) – known commercially as PayDirect by TNG eWallet – on its highways including the North-South Expressway (NSE).
According to a letter from LLM to PLUS, sighted by paultan.org, the concessionaire is to present to LLM the status of the ABT pilot project for the Hutan Kampung – Sungai Dua stretch of the NSE, the Butterworth-Kulim Expressway (BKE) and the Penang Bridge. The company was also told to present a programme for the implementation of ABT on all the highways it manages.
The concessionaire is to review the internal reports together with LLM by September 23. LLM set a window from September 29 to October 3 for the implementation of Test on Completion (TOC) for ABT on the main chunk of the NSE, from Juru in Penang to Skudai in Johor.
To recap, we’ve heard of PayDirect coming to PLUS-operated highways for some time now – since 2019 in fact, the year the method was introduced. As recent as February this year, Touch n Go said that the long-awaited introduction of PayDirect at PLUS will be happening soon, and that the approval process with PLUS is ‘nearing completion’.
This development follows the lack of progress on the ABT issues discussed in a letter from February this year and a meeting that happened in April, where it was agreed that PLUS would shorten the pilot project period for ABT and devise SOPs as mitigation steps for the issues the company raised, and come up with the ‘success criteria’.
The company also had to involve the concessionaire of the Penang Second Bridge as ABT would include the Bandar Cassia toll plaza that links the sea crossing to the NSE.
LLM pointed out that as of now, the ABT pilot project for the Hutan Kampung – Sungai Dua stretch of the NSE, the Butterworth-Kulim Expressway (BKE) and the Penang Bridge is yet to be finalised, and the TOC for the NSE’s Juru-Skudai section is also delayed.
The highway authority said that ABT has managed to reduce the instances of ‘baki kurang’ at toll plazas (more on the SOS Balance feature here), reducing congestion on highways as a result.
LLM also took note of public grumblings about the lack of PayDirect support on PLUS highways, pointing out that ABT has been in place in most other highways, and a uniformed toll payment system would be good. LLM quoted our feature story that was published earlier this month, where we lamented the need to maintain credit in physical TNG cards despite having sufficient balance in our eWallets.
What do you think of this development? Are you a Klang Valley PayDirect user looking forward to say goodbye to card reloads once and for all? Next up on our PayDirect wishlist is parking payments…
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