Challenge

Millennials and Gen Z travel more than any generation before them, and they’re paying for it in new ways. This cohort has eagerly embraced buy now, pay later (BNPL) and cryptocurrencies—options most online travel agencies (OTAs) still don’t offer.

Fly Fairly identified a clear gap in the market. Founded in Singapore in 2023 by travel industry veteran Alex Yardley, the company launched a flight-first OTA designed around payment flexibility, offering travelers the choice of how they pay without sacrificing affordability. But catering to underserved young travelers presented logistical hurdles. Air travel operates on razor-thin margins, making the higher transaction fees and credit risks typically associated with BNPL difficult for airlines and OTAs to absorb at scale. Fly Fairly also needed to support local payment methods in dozens of markets without a large engineering team to build and maintain direct integrations.

Fly Fairly needed a payment partner that could deliver three non-negotiables from day one: comprehensive payment method coverage, true global reach, and the ability to add new payment options quickly—ideally in a modular, plug-and-play fashion for each new market.
On top of all that was the need to mitigate fraud risk. “Fraudsters see us as an opportunistic target, because they assume that we don't have the level of rigor or protection that some of the larger OTAs have,” Yardley said.

Solution

Yardley didn't have to go looking for a payment solution. Soon after Fly Fairly’s launch in mid-2024, his developers came to him and asked to use Stripe. “The platform is world-renowned for being developer-friendly,” Yardley said.

Fly Fairly implemented Stripe Payments, initially using it to process credit card transactions in Singapore. The company deployed the Stripe Payment Element, an embeddable checkout UI that’s part of Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, to build out an array of local payment methods, including buy now, pay later options such as Afterpay/Clearpay, Zip, and Klarna, as well as bank transfers. With a single integration, the Payment Element supports cards, wallets, bank transfers, and BNPL, and uses AI to automatically surface those options to maximize conversion based on multiple signals.

Stripe’s global reach made it easy to offer these different payment methods. For example, Fly Fairly could use its US Stripe account to accept Klarna payments from customers in several European countries—including France, Germany, Sweden, and the UK—without requiring separate integrations for each market.

Fly Fairly also used Stripe Radar for Fraud Teams to set custom rules that require 3D Secure (3DS) on every transaction and automatically block anonymous IPs. The company leveraged Smart Disputes, a new AI-powered solution from Stripe that automates the chargeback response process by automatically generating and submitting evidence to counter disputes. This eliminated the need to juggle different dispute systems for each payment provider and saved the team time in responding to disputes.

Results

Core integration completed in two weeks

Yardley credits Stripe’s developer-first design for the speed at which Fly Fairly was able to get up and running. Since many payment methods shared the same backend and development documentation, the team could roll out capabilities in small, modular increments, said Yardley.

Customers using local payment methods book 35% more frequently and spend 24% more per booking–with 3x higher average order value (AOV)

Offering Gen Z and Millennial customers their preferred ways to pay has translated directly into higher revenue. When travelers use methods like BNPL with Fly Fairly, they book 35% more often and spend 24% more per booking than those paying with traditional cards. In addition, travelers who use BNPL generate an AOV that’s more than 3x higher than card users.

“These clear proof points are a big reason why we’ve continued to double down on these methods,” Yardley said.

New payment methods go live in under 24 hours with Optimized Checkout Suite

Using the Optimized Checkout Suite makes every new payment method a quick add-on instead of a full build. “Direct integrations for complex payment methods can take up to two months,” Yardley said. “If we want to switch something on in Stripe, we can do it in 24 hours—and that includes end-to-end testing. This massively speeds up go-to-market.”

Radar and Smart Disputes drive successful chargebacks to zero

Since implementing Radar for Fraud Teams and Smart Disputes, Fly Fairly has seen zero successful chargebacks. Radar for Fraud Teams enables the company to effectively block fraudulent transactions. When a dispute does occur, Smart Disputes automatically responds on the company’s behalf with tailored evidence, improving its win rates and recovering more revenue. Without this tool, Yardley said, he would need to hire a full team just to navigate the patchwork of dispute systems and manage disputes across multiple providers.