BRITS POS – BRITS - The South African National Roads Agency has announced price hikes for 15 toll plazas located on the N1 and N4 Platinum Toll Roads.
The higher toll fees will become payable from 1 March 2025 and affect all classes of transport including light, medium-heavy, large-heavy, and extra-large-heavy vehicles.
Toll users beware
The South African Banking Risk Information Centre last year revealed that toll gates were some of the most common places where card cloning takes place – which is also known as skimming – alongside ATMs, supermarkets, liquor stores, and restaurants.
The terms cloning and skimming refer to when criminals steal bank card details to create a counterfeit version that can be used to spend money from your account. This is most commonly done when a card is inserted into a machine such as an ATM or a point-of-sale reader that has been discreetly modified with a skimming device.
Toll plazas, in particular, are easy places for thieves to get away with this, as motorists hand over their cards to booth operators to pay their way, after which the cards disappear out of view for a few seconds until handed back. It is believed that this is when the information is stolen as the owner can’t see what is happening with their card.
It is primarily for this reason that contactless payment solutions are being rolled out across toll plazas in the country. This technology makes it far more difficult for thieves to steal sensitive information whilst simultaneously reducing the time spent at plazas, which further increases safety for road users.
They can also make use of contactless debit and credit cards, as well as smart devices linked to contactless payment apps, at plazas where tap-to-pay is enabled. (TopAuto)
