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Climate Fintech

Cards & Payments
Challenge

Advancing climate action with every transfer, payment, and card swipe

Applications are now closed
$100k first place prize to the winner

Program Highlights

Partners

How can we more accurately measure a consumer’s carbon footprint (potentially including the entire supply chain transaction) and distill this information for consumers in a simple, digestible, actionable way?

How do we incentivize cardholders to compensate for their carbon footprint and enable them to take action to mitigate their impact?

How do we change consumer behavior patterns and promote more climate-positive choices? (using education, gamification, nudges, positive affirmation, tips and techniques, etc.)

How might we offer rewards and benefits that are tailored/personalized to the specific climate actions the cardholder feels are most aligned to their values? (e.g., investment in renewable energy, carbon-neutral travel, sustainable fashion, etc.)

How might we provide the right information at the right time (point of transaction) to empower consumers to make better informed spending choices?

How can we use data-based product solutions to make carbon credits more accessible, standardized, and transparent with respect to their risk profile?

How can we use Open Banking to give consumers a more complete picture of their total financial profile and climate impact?

How can banks deepen the capabilities and maximize the appeal of card products and payments systems to help co-branded retail and travel partners develop expertise and take climate action?

How might we help corporations enable their employees to adopt more green spending behaviors?

Areas of Opportunity

Retail & Commercial Carbon Accounting
Sustainable eCommerce
Digital Wallets & Mobile Payments
Blockchain & DLT applications in sustainability
Carbon Offset Gamification & Incentivization
Reward Program Points and Benefit Structures
API Integration and “Green Open Banking”
Consumer Behavior & Education
Building a digestible “Green Score”
Integration with Online Banking and Investment Products

Timeline

Selection Criteria

  • Both startups and projects/initiates from within existing companies are eligible
  • At least two full-time employees working on your idea
  • Can be a for or non-profit, or a hybrid
  • Your project directly addresses climate in the function, operations or business model AND the project is a digital financial technology (fintech)
  • Project from anywhere/ any location can submit

What is the
Cards & Payments Challenge?

The CPC Challenge is the first-ever competition to nurture Climate Fintech, bringing together the latest innovators and technologies which can impact the way we spend, the things we buy, and the rewards we reap. The Challenge welcomes an applicant pool of diverse solutions from across digital payments, digital wallets, credit assessment, rewards, and processing infrastructure – so long as the focal point is decarbonization and better stewardship of the planet.

The Challenge will guide both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs during a 3-week sprint, exposing participants to mentorship, matchmaking, and technologies from our strategic partners, including some of the largest players in credit cards and payments. This is an unprecedented opportunity to secure outside investment and POCs in such a niche, burgeoning space.

WHY?

Credit cards and payments infrastructure are a powerful mechanism – intrinsic to consumption, though often at the expense of our environment. Now with the recent push for climate action by both consumers and banks, reconfiguring this tool to help decarbonize has never had greater traction. There is perhaps no better way to normalize climate action in our daily consumption patterns.

Research

Climate FinTech Report
by New Energy Nexus

Mapping an Emerging Ecosystem of Climate Capital Catalysts

Read More

Climate FinTech Report
by Rise

Focusing on the efforts by FinTechs to develop products and services that help tackle climate change

Read More

Media and News

Climate Fintech is Coming

What do you get when you combine the buzziest tech sector with the most high-profile public policy issue? Financial technology combating climate change.

 

Read More

 

Defining Climate Fintech

A lot has changed since the fintech boom of the 2010s and the subsequent genesis of innovation, new business models, new user experiences and the formation of new companies.

Read More