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ashless transactions were apparently an alien concept for many disconcerted Jakarta commuters confronted by unmanned automatic-payment tollgates early on Wednesday, a day after the toll-road operators began reducing the number of tollgates that accept cash.

By Oct. 31 all tollgates across the country’s toll roads will go cashless.

From one driver who attempted to tap his identity card on an automatic tollgate to those whose e-toll cards had insufficient funds, long lines of cars frequently built up. Many drivers preferred to line up at gates that accepted cash payments even though the lines were longer than at those of unmanned automatic-payment gates.

Road user Yosephine Phytama, 24, said she only used her e-toll cards when the line at the gates receiving cash were extremely long as she often neglected to top up her card.

“Once, I forgot to check the balance in my e-toll card before I lined up at the cashless gate. My balance was only Rp 2,000 [15 US cents] but I had to pay Rp 2,500, so I had to reverse and move to a cash-payment gate,” she said.

Yosephine, who regularly travels from her house in Pasar Rebo to take her parents to a hospital in Cawang, both in East Jakarta, will have to top up all of her cards before Oct. 31.

“I think we will just have to watch the implementation, as most people will forget to top up their e-toll cards even though they have been reminded so many times,” she said.

As of Wednesday, the Jelambar 2 tollgates and Slipi 2 tollgates in West Jakarta, were still accepting cash payments, as staff of state-owned banks partnering with state-owned toll operator Jasa Marga, which manages more than 70 percent of toll roads in the country, were seen marketing e-toll cards at the gates to encourage road users to switch to cashless transactions.

Launched in 2014 and endorsed by Bank Indonesia, the system aims to cut lengthy queues at toll gates, simplify payment processes and reduce operational costs by toll-road operators.

According Jasa Marga, around 2.28 million vehicles entered toll roads throughout Jakarta in August but only 819,000 of these used e-toll cards to do so.

Jasa Marga operations director Subakti Syukur said the cashless payment was implemented “in stages” as they needed to market 101,000 new cards daily to meet the target of 100 percent cashless payments by the end of October.

“We need to sell 1.5 million new cards to ensure all of our customers can proceed with the cashless transaction. We are aiming to reach at least 90 percent of motorists using e-toll cards in early October” he said.

He said that imposing cashless payments could lead to chaos, citing congestion caused by a lack of drivers using cards when cashless payment was implemented at the Alam Sutera Kunciran tollgate in Tangerang, Banten, earlier this year. “We’ve cooperated with banks that issue e-toll cards to sell the cards at the gates,” he said.

The e-payments have led motorists to buy various types of tong tol, sticks used to tap the cards when the gap between the car and the payment machines is too wide, images of which have gone viral.

Transportation expert Djoko Setijowarno said a sudden shift from cash-based to cashless payments would require motorists to change ingrained habits. “Take transactions on commuter rail lines, there was also [passenger] resistance, but eventually all commuter used cards,” he said.