Amazon India Now Offers Movie Ticket Bookings

Amazon customers in India can now book movie tickets on its app or website through a partnership with BookMyShow, Economic Times (ET) reported on Saturday (Nov. 2).

In a five-year exclusive commercial partnership, customers can log onto the Amazon app or Amazon.in mobile site and book tickets from a movie tickets tab under the ‘shop by’ option on Amazon Pay.

The collaboration follows the eCommerce giant’s May foray into flight ticketing in India with the travel booking platform Cleartrip.

“This partnership increases the acceptance of Amazon Pay and adds a new dimension to how people see the instrument, its utility and usefulness,” Mahendra Nerurkar, director of Amazon Pay, told ET. “Amazon Pay is also available as a payment instrument on BookMyShow or Cleartrip, so we leave it up to the customer where they want to pay.”

Amazon said its credit card users in India will get a 2 percent cashback on each movie ticket purchase.

The partnership gives BookMyShow the ability to reach potential customers outside of India’s top 100 million Internet users, a sector Amazon has spent the past 24 months pursuing. BookMyShow reports about 200 million monthly visitors from the top 25 or so cities.

“It made a lot of sense for BookMyShow to dip into that customer base of non-banked, unaccounted for and probably cash customers that Amazon is trying to solve for,” Ashish Hemrajani, founder and CEO of BookMyShow, told the news outlet.

Amazon Pay allows customers to pay for Amazon products, pay bills, transfer money, book flights and more. With BookMyShow, Amazon can bring customers a one-stop-shopping experience in line with what competitors Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay have done.

Last month, Amazon announced that its customers in India could use voice commands via Alexa in tandem with Amazon Pay to pay utility, internet, mobile and satellite cable TV bills.

India was the first market to have access to this combination of Amazon Pay and Alexa to pay bills. Shopping with Alexa via voice commands and Amazon Pay are both available on their own in many markets.