Standard Charetered has contracted with Sweden's Doconomy to provide customers with a digital tool that tracks carbon emissions and freshwater consumption on goods bought using the bank's credit and debit cards.
The Doconomy application uses the Åland Index introduced in 2016 to provide financial institutions with carbon footprint calculations for every transaction, which recently added freshwater calculations to its impact presentation.
For any card transactions, the index can calculate the carbon and water footprints of purchases in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents and water used per litre respectively.
This output is then visualised for clients on Standard Chartered’s mobile banking application. The 47 sectors identified by Doconomy, corresponding to the most common sectors that consumers buy goods and services from, are further divided into various overarching lifestyle categories such as home, food and transport to allow clients to see — on a monthly and individual transaction basis — how their impact weighs differently across various sectors and take proactive steps to reduce their carbon emissions and water consumption.
The bank will pilot the service for clients in Pakistan later this year.