What happened

The National Land Transport Agency (ANTT) held Public Hearing No. 14/2026 on October 8, 2026, with the aim of collecting contributions on the proposed Regulatory Sandbox Notice for Interoperability of the Free Flow System. During the hearing, the fundamentals of the architecture of an Interoperability Portal were presented, which aims to integrate concessionaires, payment systems, and users through information sharing.

The principles of the proposal include user journey centrality, informational and financial separation, decentralized financial settlement, technological and competitive neutrality, information security, data protection, transparency, and traceability. The architecture provides for the generation and processing of passage events to identify vehicles and tariffs. The Interoperability Portal will be responsible for receiving, validating, securely storing, monitoring, and auditing these events. Users will be able to view the passages and access payment options, which include direct payment to the concessionaire, via an authorized company, or through an interoperable payment system of the concessionaires. Financial settlement will be decentralized, directing the amounts directly to the concessionaires.

The Regulatory Sandbox aims to assess the viability of the interoperable infrastructure, produce technical, operational, regulatory, technological, and institutional evidence, and support the improvement of regulation and contracts for a possible definitive implementation of the solution. In the news of October 8, ANTT informed the deadline for contributions until October 23, 2026. Check the official process to confirm the current situation.

Context and impact

The Free Flow system, which eliminates the need for stops at toll plazas, is already in operation on some highways. The proposal for a Regulatory Sandbox for interoperability seeks to standardize and simplify payment management, which today can vary between concessionaires. For carriers, the current fragmentation requires extra attention in the reconciliation of passages and payments, as a hypothesis of organization to be verified in the records of the operation itself. ANTT's initiative aims to create an infrastructure that, in the future, may unify the way passages are recorded, consulted, and paid, reducing operational complexity and the risk of fines for non-payment.

TRRC Analysis

The immediate decision for the carrier is to identify where passage reconciliation loses information, without assuming that the proposed portal is already operational. The design presented separates consultation and settlement: viewing an event and confirming its payment are different stages. A control that only keeps the total charge does not allow locating where a discrepancy arose.

As an organizational method, TRRC suggests comparing the record of a passage with its status and receipt in the channel used. This comparison produces a concrete question for the public consultation: what information allows linking the event to the payment confirmation? It does not prove a systemic failure nor requires early migration to a still experimental technology.

In practice: checklist

  • Separate a passage from the operation and record vehicle, section, date, consulted channel, and informed status. Use the data internally; any public contribution should omit unnecessary personal and commercial information.
  • Compare this record with the available receipt, preserving the transaction identification. If the passage and payment cannot be related, record exactly which field is missing and consult the responsible official channel, without assuming settlement or duplication.
  • If the difficulty is relevant to the proposal, turn it into a technical question: how will the user identify the relationship between passage, payment channel, and confirmation? Present the example without attributing to the future portal a function not yet demonstrated.
  • Before sending the contribution, check the deadline, documents, and channel on ParticipaANTT indicated by the agency. Maintain the current monitoring procedure until there is applicable confirmation of a change.

Limits and points to confirm

The proposal is in the public hearing phase and the Regulatory Sandbox is an experiment. There is no guarantee that the solution will be implemented definitively or that all principles will be maintained in the final version. The selection of a concessionaire or consortium and the technological solution for the Interoperability Portal will still be carried out. The date of a possible definitive implementation and the real impact on operations and costs are not yet known. Full interoperability will depend on the adherence of all concessionaires and payment systems.

References

Related reading

  • Free Flow on BR-040: prepare the control of passages for the announced change: /observatorio/free-flow-br-040-controle-passagens
  • Electronic Free-Flow Toll: how to organize payment after passage: /observatorio/pedagio-eletronico-free-flow-pagamento

Related reading

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