Flights on instalments: dLocal routes Alternative Airlines through Addi and Pagaleve
A flight-booking site joins dLocal's BNPL aggregator in Colombia and Brazil. The sentence worth reading is the one addressed to the merchant, not the traveller.
Every instalment announcement carries a sentence for the shopper and one for the finance director. dLocal has published the finance director’s sentence since October 2025.
What was announced
On 2 September 2026 dLocal said Alternative Airlines had joined BNPL Fuse, its buy-now-pay-later aggregator for emerging markets, so that travellers can “spread the cost of a flight or travel package over time instead of paying it all upfront”. Per the release, the live providers are Addi in Colombia and Pagaleve in Brazil, reached through “one API integration and one contract”, with Chile, Pakistan and markets across Asia and Africa named as next.
The sentence written for the merchant
In dLocal’s own words: “Alternative Airlines collects full payment right away and carries no payment risk.” The mechanics are plain: the booking settles in full at the point of sale, while the schedule — and the consequences of missing one — sits with a local lender. Risk does not evaporate because a merchant stops holding it; it moves to the provider, and on to the traveller.
Note how that lender arrives. Per the release the airline reaches Addi and Pagaleve through one contract with dLocal, not a lender relationship per country, so the lender is chosen upstream of the booking page — the same shift we described when Klarna arrived at US checkouts through the acquirer.
Not said, and not new
No merchant discount rate. No consumer APR, no instalment count, no late-fee terms, and no named legal entity behind either lender. dLocal’s 9 June 2026 expansion release comes closest: fixed-term instalments, schedules set upfront by local providers “who also manage the credit relationship” — brands, not legal entities.
By contrast, Alternative Airlines’ UK buy-now-pay-later small print names its regulator, its firm reference number and its role: Alternative Airlines Limited “acts as a credit intermediary and not a lender”. Nothing of that shape accompanies the 2 September release; the June one goes no further than dLocal “handling licensing, compliance, and settlement in each one” — a claim about dLocal, not about whose permission the traveller’s agreement sits under.
This is an addition, not a debut: the same site advertises “over 40 payment options” — Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm among them, Addi and Pagaleve alongside. BNPL Fuse is not new either, having launched on 27 October 2025 and been expanded on 9 June 2026. Nor has its headline reach moved: eight countries and over 500 million buyers at launch, the same two figures this week — “underbanked” then, “potential” now. That June release, though, itemised seven live markets, not eight, listed Addi (Colombia) as “now live” while placing Colombia “in the pipeline”, and put processed volume at USD 18.9 million in March 2026.
None of this is advice. Whatever the booking page calls it, a fare paid in parts is credit, and the terms that decide what a late payment costs live with the local provider — not the booking site, the aggregator, or the press release.