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Soon, Indian travellers will be able to hail a Uber ride abroad in rupees using their existing Paytm account, according to Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm.
“By the end of May, Paytm will be able to launch the Uber-Paytm in-app integration feature for its Indian customers so that Indian travellers will be able to pay for their Uber rides outside of India through their Paytm account,” said Sharma.
“We will have no hidden conversion charges and will charge the regular forex exchange rates,” he added.
Sharma was speaking on the sidelines of an announcement by Uber and China’s third-party payments platform Alipay.
Uber has partnered with Alipay to enable its Chinese customers to request and pay for their Uber rides outside of China using their Alipay accounts.
“Alipay’s collaboration with Uber reflects a step forward of Ant Financial’s global strategy, and the collaboration also extends to Alipay’s strategic global partners like Paytm in India,” said Eric Jing, President of Ant Financial, which runs Alipay.
“The global scale in-app integration will make international travel easier for Alipay’s over 450 million active users,” he added.
Until now, Chinese riders using the Uber app internationally needed to connect a dual-currency credit card to their account, and were billed for their rides in US dollars. Eric Alexander, Head of Business, Uber Asia-Pacific, said: “Chinese travellers know and love how easy it is to request and pay for Uber rides at home; now we’re excited to bring this experience to them wherever they are in the world, right from the Alipay app.”
Alipay, the world’s largest third-party payments provider that has acquired a 25 per cent stake in India’s largest third-party payments provider Paytm, has extended the collaboration to its India counterpart as well.
Alipay has been sharing its technology with Paytm since the stake acquisition took place in February last year, and will expand a similar strategy and product integration between Alipay, Uber and Paytm.
“We want to bring better payment services to people in India and we are achieving our goals with technologies powered by Alipay,” said Sharma of Paytm. “Leveraging the strategic partnership with Ant Financial, we look forward to working closely with more global partners like Uber to grow our influence in order to benefit our 126 million users.”
Paytm and Uber will be able to offer in-app integration services in around 15 countries where Alipay is functioning currently.
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