“Can a flight booking aggregator win on payment flexibility — offering more BNPL, financing, and payment-method choice than any competitor?”
Alternative Airlines began as a UK/US-focused flight booking aggregator, covering 600+ airlines worldwide. Over time, the company expanded into smaller and more niche markets, requiring new payment infrastructure — notably using Stripe Issuing to pay smaller airlines directly via virtual cards. The company has also aggressively layered buy-now-pay-later and flight financing options — partnering with Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay, Zip, and many others — to differentiate itself in the competitive OTA space. The embedded finance stack is core to the product proposition: offering more payment flexibility than any other travel booking platform.
Alternative Airlines processes payments through Stripe and Stripe Elements.
Alternative Airlines's cards are issued through Stripe Issuing.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 3 layers in Alternative Airlines's stack: Payments / PSP (Stripe and Stripe Elements); Card issuing (Stripe Issuing); Lending (Buy Now Pay Later flights, Fly Now Pay Later, Monthly instalment plans, Weekly/bi-weekly payment plans and 1 other).
Alternative Airlines is headquartered in Horley, Surrey, United Kingdom.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Alternative Airlines and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.