How Banks Can Help Customers Track their CO2 Footprints

Luca Borella (Financial Economist), Dylan Thiam (Writer)

We are on the verge of a revolution.

Numerous changes are coming our way, making it difficult to keep track. To keep up with the latest innovations, one should participate in as many conferences and events as possible.

That’s exactly what my colleague Luca Borella, a Financial Economist, did when he decided to travel to Paris for the Fintech Forum 2020.

While there, he made a discovery that he had to share.

So, after we sank into the comfortable couches at the office, he told me about the first session he attended – “What is the future of financial services?”

The main topic was GreenTech.

Is GreenTech really that relevant to financial services?

“Yes! For example, during the session, Marianne Haahr (Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance) shared a very interesting use case: The Ant Forest.”

The Ant Forest is embedded in China’s most popular mobile payment platform, Alipay, and is encouraging people to reduce their carbon footprint.

Low-carbon activities, such as biking and walking to work, earn you green energy points.

You can spend the points to grow a digital tree and, in parallel, the real tree is planted by Ant Forest. Users can also pool energy points together to plant larger trees.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of trees are being planted throughout China!

“I think this kind of gamification will help individuals adjust their consumption behaviour – and positively impact the environment,” Luca added.