Industry News

Paytm adds three-hour cancellation protection feature for movie tickets

Indian online payments company Paytm has introduced a ‘cancellation protect’ feature that allows customers to cancel movie tickets up to three hours ahead of the scheduled show timing for a nominal fee upfront.

Customers have the option to pay extra for the chance to gain a full refund if they are unable to attend the show. The money back will be returned as a Paytm cash back.

The cost of a ticket with cancellation protection is just Rs.9 ($0.14/€0.12/£0.10), but is only currently available at select cinemas. It is also limited to a select number of seats per screening.

However, as it stands, there is only the option for a full cancellation. If, for example, there are five tickets and one person cannot attend, the whole order needs to be cancelled to receive the refund.

Paytm’s competitor, BookMyShow, currently offers something similar in which the ‘reserve ticket’ feature allows customers to book tickets without paying, so a cancellation can occur without losing money. However, it is also only offered at select cinemas.

In other news, Paytm recently acquired a majority stake in event ticketing platform Insider.in, creating direct competition at the top of India’s online ticket market.

Under the proposed agreement, Chinese conglomerate Alibaba-owned Paytm is set to pay $5.42m with the investment being split between Insider.in and its parent company OML Entertainment.

BookMyShow, the leading Indian ticketing platform, now faces direct competition from Paytm with both companies facilitating event and movie ticketing.

BookMyShow said in January that it sold about 100 million tickets in 2016, while Paytm claimed to have booked more than 25 million tickets through 3,500 screens in more than 550 cities.