Now you can bus books tickets on Amazon as the ecommerce major partners with redBus
Apart from bus tickets, Amazon also allows users to transfer money, make utility bill payments and mobile recharges, book flights and movie tickets.
Amazon India announced a partnership with online bus ticketing platform redBus to allow its customers to book bus tickets on its platform.
Through this partnership, Amazon customers will also get access to redBus features such as Bus Service Ratings by passengers and live tracking of buses.
Customers can use ratings of a bus service by other customers as a guide to choose the best bus options available on their route. They can also track the live location of their buses and check expected arrival times at their boarding point.
Speaking on the launch, Vikas Bansal, Director, Amazon Pay said,
“Over the course of time, Amazon app has become a one-stop destination for shopping and payment needs of our customers. They love the convenience we offer of shopping and paying- all in one single app. Today, we are pleased to announce the booking of bus tickets on Amazon. We are excited to partner with redBus and move another step forward in making life easy for our customers.”
To book bus tickets on Amazon, customers can go to ‘Bus Tickets’ category under ‘Amazon Pay’ tab and use their existing contact details and payment information, saving the effort of entering this information every time.
They can use their Amazon Pay balance, Amazon Pay UPI, or Amazon Pay ICICI credit card or any other digital payment methods for an easy checkout experience. In case customers need to cancel a ticket, they only pay the cancellation penalty as per the cancellation policy defined by the operator; Amazon does not levy any additional charges.
Speaking on the partnership, Manoj Agarwala, Senior Vice President, redBus, said,
"We are excited to partner with Amazon to bring bus ticketing to its large customer base to further widen and deepen the penetration of online bus ticketing in our country. With this partnership, we are offering yet another avenue to our bus operator partners to distribute their inventory and help grow their sales and occupancy"
Apart from bus ticketing, the Amazon platform allows users to transfer money, make utility bill payments, mobile recharges, flight bookings, and movie tickets.
Earlier, this month it was reported that the ecommerce giant, partnered with online ticket booking platform BookMyShow to help its customers buy movie tickets from within its own app.
Through its integration with redBus, Amazon isn’t the first app to introduce bus bookings on its platform, and move towards a ‘super app strategy’.
Walmart-owned PhonePe, recently rebranded its progressive in-app platform to ‘PhonePe Switch,’ a one-click entry point to a world of apps on its platform.
‘PhonePe Switch’ allows customers to seamlessly switch between PhonePe and their favourite food, grocery, shopping, and travel apps from within the app itself. With 50 partners, some of the partners include names such as Ola, redBus, Goibibo, Myntra, Delhi Metro, and Grofers.
In August, PhonePe claimed to have registered close to 65 million transacting customers, 30-40 percent of which visited its in-app platform of which a small eight to 10 percent of this number transacted through the in-app.
And Amazon is also trying to push transactions through building in-app partnerships across relevant used cases of travel and ticketing.
In September, digital payments major Paytm, also said that it would invest Rs 250 crore in its travel business over the next six months.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)
