It has over two years since Uber forged ties with Paytm exclusively to allow wallet payments for cab rides. This was probably the biggest win for Paytm as it allowed the users to make cashless payments and avoid the hassles of cash transactions.
Reliance Jio, another competitor for Paytm, has just partnered with Uber to allow cashless payments for its customers. JioMoney is Reliance Infocomm’s answer to Paytm, MobiKwik and FreeCharge and has been working on creating strong ties for some time now.
Apart from Jio Money wallet integration within Uber app, users will soon be able to request, book and pay for Uber rides directly from within the JioMoney app.
Uber has said that it will gradually roll out this feature across the country and soon people will be able to use JioMoney to make ride payments. Reliance Jio and Uber will offer some exciting offers in the beginning to take on Paytm’s dominance in this market.
Talking about this tie-up, Anirban S Mukherjee, Business Head, JioMoney said that “Jio aims to bring the benefits of evolving digital technologies to every Indian through an entire ecosystem that will allow Indians to live Digital Life to the fullest. JioMoney is an integral part of the Jio ecosystem and is fast emerging as a preferred option for digital transactions due to its ease of use, intuitive interface and growing acceptability. JioMoney’s integration with Uber will power the rapid migration of many more Uber transactions to the digital platform.”
It is also notable that Uber has been planning to launch its own digital wallet but no development has been seen so far. It has been almost 3 months now and we have no heard about this wallet, so we wonder if Uber is even going to launch one anytime soon.
In a cash-crunched economy, and Government promoting cashless transactions, it makes sense to offer users more options to make payments from. Now within Uber, there will be competition to provide better offers and discounts to lure customers on their platform.
Reliance Jio also announced the integration of JioMoney on its JioChat app. It is very easy to setup a JioMoney wallet account and pay for purchases through it. This will further increase the usage of Jio’s apps and the integration becomes stronger.
Apart from the above, Uber has an exclusive partnership with Standard Chartered credit cards, with a 20% discount per ride(max discount per month Rs. 600). However, as digital wallet industry heats up, more partnerships will be seen for the customers.
With Uber’s new partner, it will be interesting to see how Paytm responds. It will definitely lose a few of its customers, but it needs to up its game to offer some discounts to Paytm users or JioMoney usage will go up.