Leading Indian mobile payments processor Paytm has expanded its growing influence in the travel space with the ability for customers to now make hotel bookings within the app.
Paytm, which is backed by Chinese online behemoth Alibaba, has partnered with major Indian travel companies such as Goibibo and Yatra to provide inventory for domestic hotel bookings.
This will expand to international bookings in the near future, Paytm said.
"Travel has emerged as a very important category for us as the penetration of online booking is still very low in this vertical. The opportunity for the hotels category is immense, especially because the transaction penetration is still low in Tier II and III cities as far as travel is concerned," said Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
Paytm will initially offer about 20,000 hotels and hopes to quickly scale up to more than 35,000 within a short space of time.
Sharma is projecting about $80 million in revenue during the next six months.
The platform already allows customers to make in-app reservations for bus tickets.
