Challenge

Early on, Surrey, England-based Alternative Airlines did most of its business in the UK and the US, with a focus on helping customers book travel with major airlines. Over time, it entered other large markets including Australia and Canada. To continue this growth trajectory, company leaders wanted to expand into a variety of smaller markets and give customers the opportunity to fly on niche airlines that offered local and remote flights.

To achieve this goal, the company had to overcome two main challenges. First, it needed a seamless way to pay the smaller airlines it partnered with. After collecting payment from customers booking a flight with a large airline, Alternative Airlines then paid the carrier via its billing and settlement plan. Since most smaller, lower-cost airlines didn’t participate in those plans, Alternative Airlines paid them by issuing a virtual credit card for the ticket price. But the payment provider the company had been using was slow to create virtual credit cards upon customer purchases, and the cards delivered relatively low acceptance rates. That’s because many low-cost carriers rejected cards with interchange fees above a certain threshold, and the virtual cards issued by Alternative Airlines’ then-payment provider didn’t offer flexible interchange fees. As a result, Alternative Airlines was leaving money on the table.

The second challenge the company faced was that it would need to offer localized payment options to customers outside of major markets—an aim in line with Alternative Airlines’ larger objective of offering all customers a wide range of payment options to suit their specific preferences. Along with this expansion, it would need a way to facilitate cross-border settlements securely and efficiently. However, its payment provider at the time offered a limited range of payment options.

“The breadth of payment methods we offer at Alternative Airlines is central to our brand positioning,” said Avalon Harris-Trussell, partnerships lead at Alternative Airlines. “We want to empower all our customers to pay the way they want, to give everyone everywhere the freedom to fly. It is important to us to offer our customers choice, so they can pay in the way that is most convenient to them.”

Solution

After assessing a number of payment service providers, in 2021 Alternative Airlines chose to replace its existing provider with Stripe. Soon after switching to Stripe, the company saw that Stripe Issuing would be an upgrade from its previous virtual card issuing solution. Issuing’s automated processes allow companies to issue virtual credit cards in seconds, customizing spend controls to minimize exposure to unauthorized transactions, and single-use cards to control fraud risk. Stripe’s real-time notifications for each transaction also quickly identify any potential issues relating to fraud and losses, which is important for spend management.

Alternative Airlines became the first travel merchant to partner with Stripe on Stripe’s travel offering, powered by Mastercard, which allowed Alternative Airlines to offer multiple interchange fees on a single BIN. This led to an improvement in acceptance rates on low-cost airlines that previously declined virtual credit cards due to high processing costs. Moreover, Stripe gives Alternative Airlines a percentage of each interchange fee as a revenue share, essentially securing the company a new revenue stream in the form of cash back.

The company was also attracted to Stripe Payments for its ability to facilitate cross-border settlements and manage international transactions securely and efficiently across more than 135 currencies. Additionally, Alternative Airlines implemented Stripe Elements, a set of customizable payment UIs that improve the checkout flow, including the Payment Element, which offers seamless access to more than 100 different payment methods. This enabled Alternative Airlines to easily add several popular and locally preferred payment methods, including Alipay, iDEAL, Cash App Pay, Revolut Pay, WeChat Pay, Bancontact, and Apple Pay.

“Stripe really stood out in terms of the sheer volume of currencies and vast number of payment options they have on offer,” said Anaak Johal, head of commercial.

Integrating Payments gave Alternative Airlines access to the Stripe Dashboard, which provides at-a-glance access to an array of useful data on account activity, including analytics on conversion and acceptance rates.

Alternative Airlines partnered with Stripe professional services to help ensure a smooth implementation and seamless payment experience across the US and UK. The team guided the deployment of the company’s new payment form and the implementation of network tokens and Radar for Fraud Teams. Stripe professional services hosted workshops to help improve fraud prevention, focusing on dispute best practices and identifying custom Radar rules. Through the partnership, Alternative Airlines learned about financial reporting, including using the Stripe Dashboard, tax reporting, fee reporting and management, and cost optimizations.

Results

Use of Stripe Issuing’s travel offering boosts acceptance rates and lowers foreign exchange fees

In November 2024, Alternative Airlines became the first travel company to partner with Stripe on travel BINs. Since the company now has multiple interchange rate options on a single BIN, smaller airlines can realize lower interchange rates, resulting in higher acceptance rates for Alternative Airlines. The company also expects to see lower foreign exchange fees with the travel BIN.

Support for diverse payment methods and currencies accelerates global expansion, driving increase in conversion

In 2024 alone, Alternative Airlines used Stripe to transact in more than 85 currencies, and with Elements, it was able to add a significant number of different payment methods within a matter of days. This diversity in payment options helped Alternative Airlines develop trust and deepen customer relationships, supporting its global expansion. Integrating a diverse set of payment methods through Elements also reduced friction at checkout, increasing conversion rates and reducing cart abandonment.

“The solutions we’ve found with Stripe have allowed us to diversify our customer demographic and reach more people around the world,” said Harris-Trussell. “They’re crucial to our efforts to grow the business.”

Payment optimizations lead to a 30% rise in authorization rates

The Stripe team helped Alternative Airlines boost authorization rates on US transactions, identifying optimizations that could be implemented around fraud and network decline codes. As a result of those changes, US authorization increased by 30%.

Stripe Payments significantly reduces operational complexity

Using Stripe eliminated the need to manage multiple banking relationships and navigate the complexities of foreign exchange, easing the operational burden on Alternative Airlines’ team.