Are you aware of the impact your daily activities have on the environment? Have you ever wondered how your purchases contribute to carbon emissions?
What if there was a tool that could help you track your carbon footprint in real-time?
Verestro and Quicko have introduced the Mastercard Carbon Calculator to the Quicko Wallet payment application. Mastercard, in collaboration with Swedish fintech Doconomy, developed the Mastercard Carbon Calculator to provide eco-conscious consumers with carbon footprint data and insights to help inform their spending and offer ways to contribute to reforestation.
With this tool, all Quicko Wallet users can receive a snapshot of the carbon emissions generated by their purchases across spending categories, further enhanced with relatable and easy-to-understand equivalents (such as the number of trees required to absorb the same amount of CO2), and tips about living more sustainably.
"Mastercard's research shows that for 71% of Poles the concern about the environment is very important. There is a collective effort among companies, consumers, and communities to join forces and bring about significant changes that effectively tackle climate change. This collaborative movement is accompanied by a noticeable change in individuals' priorities, as they place greater emphasis on eco-conscious spending and consumption." - explains Damian Zielinski, Head of Product, Central Europe, Open Banking and New Payments Lead at Mastercard. "People are now actively seeking ways to align their purchases and rewards redemption with meaningful actions for the betterment of the planet." - Zielinski adds.
The results might be surprising for some customers - the purchase of 2 kg of food can be associated with the production of up to 50 kg of carbon equivalent, and a trip to the beautician - to around 4 kg. Even supermarket shopping can result in up to 21 kg of carbon emissions.
Carbon emissions endanger our planet, its life forms, and our future. They cause global warming, resulting in climate change. This leads to melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, disrupting animal habitats, extreme weather, and numerous other harmful effects. Therefore, tracking our carbon footprint is so important.
The aim of providing this information is to educate customers about the impact of their purchasing decisions on climate change. "We want to help consciously reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is why, together with Mastercard and Quicko, we have decided to provide the Mastercard Carbon Calculator on our platform. This is a new product that all our customers can already use," says Krzysztof Drzyzga, CEO of Verestro.
The product is available in the Quicko Wallet application. And each of Verestro affiliates can have it too: Verestro offers the Mastercard Carbon Calculator as one of many other products on its Fintech-as-a-Service platform which is already operating for over 40 clients (banks, financial institutions, other partners) in 25 countries.
The integration of the Mastercard Carbon Calculator in Quicko Wallet is a significant step towards more conscious purchasing decisions and environmental protection. By using this tool, we can learn about the impact we make on Earth, which will help us to be mindful about our purchase choices, and eventually change our behaviour to save the planet.