Paytm Goes Traveling With Booking.Com

While Paytm has made some serious waves in recent months as a mobile payments platform that recently got the backing of Chinese titan Alibaba, it’s not resting on its laurels, or on its new associations. It recently made a move to step up its value to users, calling in Booking.com to offer some extra help for travelers.

The agreement allows Booking.com’s lineup of over a million accommodations worldwide to be offered to the roughly 200 million mobile wallet users in Paytm’s customer base. That’s going to be a big step up, though Paytm has already been involved in the travel segment for some time now, offering access to flights, along with train and bus tickets, for some time now.

The company’s also planning expansion on other fronts; not only is it putting a hefty slug of investment into its current operations to expand offices and office staff, it’s also eyeing new investment in other countries.

Reports note that the company recently brought its mobile payments options to Canada, and it may well continue beyond that. Booking.com, for its part, also recently started an accelerator program known as the Booking Booster Program which would offer up support for startups in the tourism segment. It doesn’t look, however, that Paytm has benefited from this program.

Still, it’s commonly the case that any time a company can add services without adding costs to the user, it’s generally well-received. Even if only a handful of users actually use the new services, that’s still a handful of users more satisfied with the program than they were previously.

It all adds to a concept called customer experience, the start-to-finish interaction with a company that never really ends. From first contact with a company to the sale, to after sales service and into the next sale, all these components come together to produce an exciting new whole.

Adding value improves the customer experience, and with a better customer experience comes a better chance that users will continue to stick with a certain firm for some time to come. That’s a great end result, and one that most any business—Paytm included—would likely prefer to see happen.