dLocal Partners Alternative Airlines on BNPL Flight Payments

In Short

• dLocal and Alternative Airlines have partnered to offer buy now, pay later for flight bookings in emerging markets.
• The first rollout covers Colombia and Brazil, with more countries planned across Asia and Africa.

What Happened

Payments firm dLocal says it has partnered with Alternative Airlines to let travellers book flights now and pay over time. Buy now, pay later, or BNPL, is a credit option that splits a purchase into instalments, like paying for a phone in monthly chunks instead of upfront.

Alternative Airlines is joining dLocal’s BNPL Fuse product. BNPL Fuse is a single integration that connects a merchant to multiple local BNPL lenders through one API, which is a standard way software systems talk to each other.

Through this setup, Alternative Airlines will offer Addi in Colombia and Pagaleve in Brazil without signing separate technical and legal contracts for each provider. dLocal said the BNPL Fuse network currently spans eight countries and can reach more than 500 million potential buyers.

The companies said they plan to expand into more markets where instalment buying is already common. They named Chile and Pakistan, plus other countries across Asia and Africa.

Why It Matters

Travel is a high-ticket purchase, so monthly instalments can be the difference between a booking and a drop-off. That matters even more in emerging markets where many consumers do not have credit cards. dLocal cited World Bank data suggesting only about 10% to 15% of consumers in emerging markets hold a credit card.

For online travel agencies and travel booking sites, adding local credit partners country by country can be slow. A single API that bundles multiple BNPL providers can shorten the time to launch, and it can make pricing and checkout more consistent across markets.

For African travel demand, the bigger point is access. If outbound travel grows faster than card penetration, BNPL becomes one of the more practical rails for spreading costs, especially when the merchant gets paid upfront and the BNPL provider takes the credit risk.