Inside the Tollway

In the eight short months since the Illinois Tollway first introduced Pay By Plate, over one million customers have leveraged the service to pay their tolls seamlessly online.In the wake of a worldwide pandemic, the Illinois Tollway responded with extensive mitigation efforts including the halt to cash toll payments.  With an urgent need to find new ways for customers to pay, the Tollway’s operations and business team accelerated the development of a new technology designed to let infrequent and out of state customers set up a service to pay tolls for either short term, one time payments for rental cars, or ongoing and infrequent use.  And while I-PASS is still the best, most cost-effective way to pay tolls on the Illinois Tollway, Pay By Plate now offers former cash customers a way to safely and securely pay unpaid tolls without an I-PASS transponder or I-PASS account.  The service been so successful in serving customers, over one million unique travelers on the Illinois Tollway system have now enrolled in the service.  So whether you just traveled or are about to travel, simply provide your license plate details, dates of travel, and a payment method and you're all set.What can you do with Pay By Plate?Already miss a toll? No problem. For up to 14 days after you’ve traveled, you can now enter your vehicle and payment information into the Pay By Plate system. Our system will bill you the cash rate for your unpaid tolls.Renting or Borrowing a car? Pay Tolls Here! Now you can use the Pay By Plate system to pay and you'll be able to set a start and an end date to ensure you're not charged in the future for that same vehicle. This service allows you to backdate the start date by 14 days. Managing Multiple Vehicles? You can do that on Pay By Plate too! If you’d like, within the Pay By Plate system you can add vehicles and manage your payment methods.