Innovative Payment Providers Are Incentivizing Green Spending

Individual spending choices have an outsize role on the health of the planet. But for most consumers, understanding the impact of their purchasing habits and taking the necessary actions to change them is complicated and inconvenient. That’s why green startup Future is partnering with Visa for the Visa FutureCard to reward shoppers’ climate-smart spending, and help bring their purchases more in line with their intentions. 

To nudge people in the right direction, the Visa FutureCard rewards shoppers with 5% cash back when cardholders purchase items like low-carbon and plant-based foods, secondhand clothing, take the bus and charge their electric car, or when they purchase other products or services that have a significantly lower carbon footprint than the most commonly available alternative. By incentivizing more sustainable choices and offering easy ways for customers to offset their spending, Future and Visa hope together to inspire shoppers to take charge of their climate choices and drive a positive impact. 

Future and Visa aren’t alone in their efforts when it comes to Retailing For Profit & Purpose. Realizing that sustainability is increasingly top of mind for consumers, and that empowering shoppers to create a positive impact isn’t just good for the planet, but also serves as a great way to establish competitive differentiation and advantage, financial services company Mastercard has developed a new carbon calculator tool in partnership with fintech startup Doconomy. 

The innovative feature, developed off the premise that saving shoppers money and reducing their carbon footprint should go hand in hand, enables banks around the world to equip their consumers with carbon footprint data and insights to help inform spending, and enables consumers to easily contribute to preserving the environment. Through the Carbon Calculator feature, consumers have the option to view the impact their purchases have and to offset that impact by contributing to forest restoration projects, whether by donating in-app or using their banks’ loyalty rewards programs. Banks can seamlessly integrate the Carbon Calculator into their mobile apps through new APIs that are available on Mastercard Developers.

Doconomy has also launched an online tool to help individuals calculate their carbon footprint in partnership with UN Climate Change, which further provides users with the tools and solutions to understand how everyday decisions impact the climate and environment.

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This article originally appeared in the PSFK iQ report, Retailing For Profit & Purpose.