You can buy 'X-Men' tickets through Snapchat

You can now buy movie tickets inside of Snapchat. Kinda.

On Monday, 20th Century Fox began a Snapchat ad campaign for its latest "X-Men" movie that included the option for fans to buy tickets to the movie inside the app. Fox runs a short movie preview, then users can swipe up to get more info on the movie, including the chance to buy tickets.

Snapchat isn't actually selling the tickets — that would be Fandango or Movietickets.com — but it's hosting Fandango's mobile website inside its app. So once you buy a ticket, you can instantly jump back to snapping. It's something Snapchat tried late last month with Target and Lancome, too.

This isn't e-commerce in the traditional sense — that is, Snapchat is not actually doling out the tickets or any other physical products, and it's not processing payments or taking a cut of any sales driven. It's just using its ads to let people shop from other retailers.

But it's a step toward commerce, and may give Snapchat an idea of whether or not its user base would buy stuff inside the app in the future. It certainly hopes people will. At the Code/Media conference in February, board member and Cosmopolitan Editor in Chief Joanna Coles said shopping will eventually be coming to Snapchat.

It has offered a few in-app purchases before, like the ability to pay to re-watch snaps, but those projects have been shuttered.

And if people don't want to buy movie tickets through Snapchat, well, Fox has other ways to generate buzz for the movie: It bought up every one of Snapchat's popular face-distorting lenses so users can look like their favorite "X-Men" characters. It's the first time Snapchat has ever sold a lens takeover.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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