Which Airlines Let You Pay with Buy Now, Pay Later? The Full 2026 Tracker (Plus 3 Airlines Testing Crypto)
We checked airline checkout flows worldwide to find every carrier that actually lets you split the cost of a flight with Buy Now, Pay Later — and the three now testing crypto payments too.
Adinda Irawan · Writer
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BNPL at airline checkout went from niche to mainstream in the last 18 months
SAS was quietly offering Klarna invoicing back in 2014, but it stayed a fringe feature for most of the decade.
Four major airline groups added Klarna in about 18 months: Qatar Airways (Oct 2025), Lufthansa Group (Nov 2025), TAP Air Portugal (expanded Oct 2026), and Southwest (announced Jul 2026). That's a trend, not a coincidence.
We checked airline-owned payment pages, help centres and official press releases — not third-party travel agencies reselling tickets — to verify who actually offers this at checkout today. Where a claim only traced back to a reseller site or a stale, multi-year-old announcement with no current confirmation, we left it out of the main list. Every row below links to the source we verified it against.
Key: ✅ Live now ⏳ Announced, rolling out ⚠️ Can't confirm still live ❌ Never launched
North America
| Status | Airline | Provider(s) | Terms | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ | American Airlines | Affirm; Citi Flex Pay | Affirm: pay-in-4 interest-free or 3/6/12+ month plans (0–36% APR by credit). Citi Flex Pay: fixed monthly plan, $75 fare minimum, eligible Citi/AAdvantage cardholders only | aa.com payment options |
| ✅ | United Airlines | Uplift ("Pay Monthly") | $100 minimum, up to 11 monthly payments, 0–36% APR by credit | united.com Uplift page |
| ✅ + ⏳ | Southwest Airlines | Uplift (since 2021); Klarna (announced Jul 2026) | Uplift: roughly 3–11 month terms depending on source, 0% APR in promos. Klarna: pay-in-full, 4 interest-free instalments, or longer financing — announced for a fall 2026 rollout alongside Uplift, not a replacement | Southwest community knowledge base (Klarna: Jul 2026 Business Wire release, exact URL not independently confirmed) |
Europe
| Status | Airline | Provider(s) | Terms | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ | Lufthansa Group (Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels Airlines) | Klarna | "Pay Later" (defer) and "Financing" (spread) options; launched Nov 2025 in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, expanding group-wide through Q2 2026 | Lufthansa Group newsroom |
| ✅ | Qatar Airways | Klarna; PayPal Credit (US) | Pay in 3 interest-free instalments, or Pay-in-30/Financing; live across 17 markets since Oct 2025, not available for GCC-origin bookings | Qatar Airways BNPL page, Businesswire |
| ✅ | Finnair | Klarna | Pay in 30 days (interest-free) or up to 36 monthly instalments; FI/SE sites and iOS app only | Finnair payment methods page |
| ✅ | Norwegian Air Shuttle | Klarna | Availability depends on market/currency; fee-free per Norwegian's own page. (Not to be confused with Norse Atlantic Airways, a separate airline with no confirmed Klarna integration) | norwegian.com payment options |
| ✅ | SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) | Klarna | Invoice/partial-payment option; geographic eligibility unclear in English-language terms, may be limited to Norway/Sweden | flysas.com FAQ |
| ✅ | TAP Air Portugal | Klarna | "Pay in 3"; launched ~Easter 2025, expanded to France, Spain, Italy and the US as of Oct 2026 | flytap.com (exact payment-page URL not independently confirmed); reported by The Paypers and IBS Intelligence |
Middle East
| Status | Airline | Provider(s) | Terms | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ | Saudia | Tamara | Instalment financing at checkout; partnership announced Sept 2025 | Tamara's partnership announcement |
| ✅ | flynas | Tabby | 4 monthly instalments, SAR 100 minimum, excludes nasholidays bookings | flynas.com/en/tabby |
Asia-Pacific
| Status | Airline | Provider(s) | Terms | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ | Cathay Pacific | Atome (Singapore, Malaysia); Klarna (UK) | Atome: 3 equal instalments, interest-free. Klarna UK: pay in 3, interest-free, UK residents only, minimum spend reported inconsistently (£30–£300 across sources) | Cathay SG Atome offer, Cathay UK Klarna offer |
| ✅ | Jetstar | Afterpay | 4 fortnightly instalments, interest-free, 1.5% payment fee; AU/NZ bookings on jetstar.com only | jetstar.com/au/en/afterpay |
| ✅ | Qantas | Zip | Zip Pay (revolving, always interest-free) or Zip Money (up to 5 years interest-free, then 25.90% p.a.); 1.5% payment fee; AU-departing flights only | qantas.com Zip payment page |
| ✅ | Virgin Australia | Zip Pay / Zip Money | Available directly at checkout per the airline's own help page | virginaustralia.com payment options |
Crypto at checkout: three airlines, and two broken promises
Direct crypto payment is rarer and newer than BNPL, but it's real in three cases now:
| Status | Airline | Crypto accepted | Restrictions | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ | airBaltic | Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Dogecoin, plus USDC and other USD-pegged stablecoins, via BitPay | Sources conflict on whether this applies to Basic or GREEN fares specifically; no minimum/maximum found | BitPay |
| ✅ | Emirates | Crypto via Crypto.com Pay (specific coin list not itemised in official materials) | UAE residents with a Crypto.com account only, bookings priced and settled in AED; launched Jul 2026, no confirmed expansion since | Emirates media centre |
| ✅ | Air Arabia | AE Coin, an AED-pegged stablecoin, via the AEC Wallet app (partner: Mbank) | UAE/region-first since launch in May 2025; requires installing the AEC Wallet app, not a simple in-browser flow; no confirmed expansion since | WAM (UAE state news agency) |
Two airlines made the same promise and didn't keep it. ❌ BermudAir announced a Zero Hash stablecoin partnership in May 2025, targeting checkout integration "by end of 2025." We checked flybermudair.com directly in November 2026: no mention of crypto, stablecoins, USDC, USDT or Zero Hash anywhere on the site, and no news confirms it ever launched. ❌ Vueling announced a Criptan/BitPay crypto option in January 2023, promising it "from mid-2023." As of 2026, third-party trackers of airline payment methods still list Vueling without crypto. Both deadlines passed years ago with nothing to show — while Emirates went from announcement to a real, working integration in a matter of months.
⚠️ LOT Polish Airlines accepted Bitcoin via BitPay starting in 2015, but its current payment pages list only cards, PayPal, BLIK and Klarna — crypto appears to have quietly ended, with no announcement found confirming when or why.
Partnered before, can't confirm it's still live
These airlines had a real, airline-announced BNPL partnership at some point, but we could not confirm it's still active at checkout today — in several cases, third-party sources now explicitly describe the option as unavailable. We're not counting these as current, but we're naming them rather than letting the claims disappear quietly: ⚠️ flyadeal (Tamara, announced 2024), ⚠️ Garuda Indonesia (Akulaku PayLater, 2022 — a reseller now lists this as unavailable), ⚠️ AirAsia Indonesia (Kredivo, ~2021 — also reported unavailable by a reseller), ⚠️ Philippine Airlines (BillEase, 2021), ⚠️ Cebu Pacific (Cashalo, 2019 — the airline's current payment list doesn't include it), ⚠️ VietJet (MOVI, 2022). On the crypto side, add ⚠️ Volaris (airport-counter-only Bitcoin via Chivo Wallet in El Salvador, announced 2021, no reconfirmation since) and the wider 2021 UATP/BitPay network deal that also named Turkish Airlines, WestJet, Frontier and Sun Country without any carrier-specific confirmation it was ever activated.
Checked and ruled out entirely
No direct airline-owned evidence of BNPL was found for British Airways, Air France, KLM, Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz Air, Emirates, Turkish Airlines, flydubai, Singapore Airlines, ANA, Japan Airlines, AirAsia (Malaysia), IndiGo, LATAM, Avianca, GOL, Frontier, Alaska, JetBlue, Hawaiian, Spirit, Copa, Delta (has Amex Plan It, a card-issuer installment plan, not a third-party BNPL brand), South African Airways, Vueling, Volotea, Transavia, Pegasus, SunExpress, Eurowings, TUI fly, Icelandair, Condor, Scoot, Thai AirAsia, Vistara/Air India, China Eastern, China Southern, Korean Air, Asiana, EVA Air, China Airlines, Royal Jordanian, EgyptAir, Kenya Airways, RwandAir, Royal Air Maroc, Air Algerie, Volaris, VivaAerobús, Aeromexico, Azul, JetSmart, Sky Airline, Air Canada, WestJet, Virgin Atlantic, Iberia, Aegean Airlines, Porter Airlines, Allegiant Air, Breeze Airways, Sun Country and Flair Airlines. For crypto, no direct evidence was found for Etihad, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, Ryanair, Wizz Air, easyJet, flydubai, Saudia, flynas, flyadeal, and every Asia-Pacific and Americas carrier checked. Any claims we found for these traced only to third-party travel agencies reselling tickets, stalled pilots, or payment-network-level deals never confirmed activated airline-by-airline.
Methodology
We counted an airline as offering BNPL or crypto only when we could verify it on the airline's own website, app or help centre, or via an official press release naming the airline as a direct partner — never a third-party travel agency. Where terms conflicted across sources, we noted the conflict rather than picking one figure, and where an airline missed its own promised launch date, we said so rather than repeating the original announcement as current fact. This reflects what we verified as of November 2026 and will be updated as airlines add or drop payment options.
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