Goibibo, an Indian online travel company, recently announced its partnership with PhonePe, an Indian digital payments start-up. This app-in-app partnership will provide a unified login and payments experience to over 100 million PhonePe users while making their hotel bookings.
As a part of this partnership, Goibibo will be live with their ‘Hotels’ store (microapp) on the PhonePe app. Leveraging mutual synergies, the alliance brings together a streamlined travel booking experience through Goibibo, and assured reliability and integrity of payments through PhonePe. In an industry first, PhonePe users will also be able to use their goCash balance (Goibibo’s promotional currency) in the PhonePe app, to book domestic and international hotels.
Commenting on the partnership, Sanjay Bhasin, COO, Goibibo said, “Goibibo is delighted to partner with PhonePe, which is at the forefront of India’s digital payment ecosystem to make online travel bookings even more easy, seamless and convenient for our customers. This partnership will extend Goibibo’s extensive selection of 50,000+ domestic hotels & homestays, including Goibibo certified goStays and half a million international hotels to PhonePe’s growing customer base. PhonePe has taken a unique approach to solve digital payments, and their open ecosystem allows us to build the Goibibo experience into their app and engage with a wider user base on their platform.”
Rahul Chari, co-founder & CTO, PhonePe said, “Goibibo has transformed online travel for millions, establishing itself as India’s leading online travel player, and we are excited to have them as a strategic partner. With this partnership, Indian travellers can easily and conveniently make hotel bookings within their PhonePe app. The microapp storefront was built by GoIbibo in just 3 weeks, which is testimony to how simple it is to build out a merchant experience on PhonePe. We also want to commend the Goibibo team for their agility in getting the store ready in record time.”
Rituraj Rautela, head of In-App Platform, PhonePe added, “This is a big technology milestone for us, as this is the first partner built microapp on our platform. Goibibo has built this store using React Native, enabling a rich user experience similar to their native apps. Our platform is now ready for partners to easily open-up their stores for accelerated distribution of their services across our 100M+ users. This would empower partners to push faster product iterations and innovate with custom experiences, which would immensely enrich the mobile commerce experience in India.”
Along with easier payment, cancellation and refund options, consumers will also get a native-app-like user experience on the PhonePe app.