Sweden’s Klarna Bank AB said Thursday that it has signed a strategic partnership with Israeli cloud-based website development platform Wix.com Ltd. The buy-now-pay-later payments specialist said that with the deal Wix eCommerce merchants across 17 countries can accept payments from their customers with Klarna. Wix merchants will be able to offer Klarna’s Pay in 4 and Pay in 3 solutions that enable shoppers to split their purchases into interest-free payments over time, while retailers get paid upfront and in full.
Vendors offer tech stack for fintechs to assess their carbon impact and to neutralize emissions
- Patch, the API-first carbon removal marketplace, has partnered with climate impact technology firm Doconomy to introduce a first-of-its-kind tech stack for climate fintech. This partnership will provide financial services with the necessary tools to assess their carbon impact and neutralize emissions, marking a new milestone in the global shift to green banking. Patch enables fintech platforms and developers to programmatically purchase carbon removal and offsets from a network of nature-based and frontier negative emission technology projects. Doconomy offers impact calculations on products and individual lifestyle as well as providing banks, fintech companies and financial institutions tools to calculate the climate impact of their digital financial transactions, all in an effort to educate consumers of their environmental impact.
- Now, Doconomy will embed Patch’s API into its platform, enabling banks and financial institutions to not only gather transaction impact insights, but take climate action via the purchase of high quality carbon removal. This partnership also sets the stage for the first-ever Climate Fintech Cards & Payments Challenge, which enables startups to showcase digital financial climate solutions for a shot at a $100,000 prize and the chance to work with established financial stakeholders on proof-of-concept projects.
Banks consortium offers guide to achieve net zero commitments
- The Prince of Wales’ Financial Services Task Force (FSTF) launches a Net Zero Practitioner’s Guide to help the banking industry adopt a consistent and transparent approach to supporting clients’ transition to net zero and deliver real economy emission reduction. The FSTF Practitioner’s Guide combines the knowledge and collective experience of 11 banks. The guide is designed to support the implementation of banks’ net zero commitments and meet the growing need for specificity. Focusing on client emissions related to bank financing, as opposed to banks’ own operational emissions, the guide will help banks deliver on the critical role they must play actively supporting clients to transition. It is written for a wide audience, from senior executives to those building and delivering a banks’ net zero strategy.
- This guide provides a toolkit that can be used across all sectors and geographies. The first part of the guide provides recommendations on key choices banks will face as they develop robust strategies, alongside an overview of the potential trade-offs involved and insight into the decision-making processes, highlighting areas for potential common ground across the industry. The second section explores how banks can engage with clients and policymakers to deliver financing to help accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy, and disclose progress transparently for stakeholders. The guide provides non-binding forward-looking recommendations which address key choices banks will face in looking to develop robust, methodologically sound strategies with positive climate impact, based on the varied experiences and knowledge of the FSTF banks.
Fintech adds temperature metrics to CO2 footprinting to inform banks’ consumers about envt. implications
A new partnership between green banking fintech ecolytiq and climate metrics developer right. based on science is going to bring temperature alignment metrics to bank customers throughout Europe and North America. With this new feature, consumers will be able to clearly understand how their purchasing and investing behaviors relate to the overall heating of the planet. ecolytiq will offer these calculations in conjunction with the CO2 footprinting technologies to inform consumers about the diverse environmental implications of how they use their money. The proprietary methodology, developed by right. based on science, models on a personal level the degree of global warming that would occur, if every consumer adopted one’s spending behavior. ecolytiq equips banks with the digital infrastructure and tools they need to engage their customers in sustainability. The API product integrates seamlessly into existing digital banking apps to improve user experience, generate engagement, and encourage climate action. Its Sustainability-as-a-Service® solution analyzes payment transactions to build individualized climate impact calculations and nudge customers towards smart and sustainable spending choices.
JPMorgan to pressures its supplier network to increase spending with Black and Hispanic businesses
JPMorgan is urging its 100 largest business partners to accelerate spending with Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses. Failure to do so means JPMorgan may revisit its contract with the supplier. If a supplier doesn’t increase its spending with Black- or Hispanic-owned businesses, JPMorgan would first downgrade its contract from preferred or “Gold Status” to “regular. Forty percent of JPMorgan’s largest 100 suppliers have formally agreed to increase their spending with Black- or Hispanic-owned businesses, and some $6.2 billion will be directed to diverse businesses, including minority-owned businesses, over the next three years. The firm expected suppliers to spend a “significant” amount on minority-owned businesses or risk their status with the firm, though they did not specify how much. It’s worth noting that JPMorgan is pressuring other companies to increase spending with Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses. The result is a “multiplier effect” in the economy. JPMorgan’s supplier push was the result of conversations with CEO Jamie Dimon and other team members and the next step in the company’s plan to advance racial equity in the US economy. The $6.2 billion that JPMorgan’s suppliers are set to spend on minority businesses is expected to increase as more suppliers sign on over the next weeks and months. Less funding for Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses compared with white-owned businesses is one of the reasons a stark racial wealth gap persists. JPMorgan could inspire other companies to pressure their own suppliers to do more business with Black- and Hispanic-owned companies.
JPMorgan to share its patents to spur low-carbon technology development
JPMorgan Chase & Co would allow others to use its intellectual property in hopes of speeding up the transition to low carbon technology and energy sources. The bank is making several key patents related to how it efficiently cools and ventilates its massive data centres available to anyone using low carbon technologies as part of a joint pledge initiated by Microsoft, Facebook and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Launched in April this year, companies have shared more than 450 patents as part of the pledge, shining a light on the technology that these companies are using to mitigate their carbon footprints. As part of their technology infrastructure, banks and other major companies use huge data centres, which consume vast amounts of energy for cooling and ventilation to prevent systems from overheating. While some companies, including JPMorgan, have moved some applications to a public cloud, financial services companies have remained largely reliant on private data centres because they are considered the most secure option. the company was making the patents available to back up the bank’s commitment to the international Paris climate accord.
Platform offers algos and remote sensor tech to ID high quality nature based projects for FIs on the cheap
Cultivo, a new way to invest in nature at scale, launches its ‘Triple Crisis Action Plan’, a new plan to tackle the worsening triple planetary crisis of global warming, biodiversity loss, and water stress. Based on primary research with financial institutions, corporations and foundations, Cultivo’s 5 Step Action Plan help unlock private finance into nature.
Offer nature as an attractive asset for investment: Cultivo’s new plan packages nature-based solutions into investment products, showing the financial, social and environmental returns
Use technology to reduce transaction costs and create market efficiencies: Cultivo’s new plan will leverage proprietary algorithms and remote sensor technologies to reduce the transactions costs involved in identifying high quality nature based solutions. Cultivo uses an in house Search & Origination team to do the ‘heavy lifting’ to identify the best assets to invest in. The Cultivo Technology Hub uses its own tools and 3rd party tools to provide digital MRV (monitoring, verification and reporting) to monitor the vital signs of a project and reduce monitoring costs
Cultivo’s new plan takes a more holistic approach. Cultivo assesses the ‘Natural Capital Density’ for every project, which means every layer of the services that nature provides. The Cultivo Technology Hub has tools that allow analysis of the impacts of water stress, biodiversity loss, and climate change.
Measure the right attributes, and choose the right standards. The new action plan will also ensure each project has environmental and social safeguards built in.
Cultivo’s approach ensures all data for nature-based projects is transparent to all stakeholders from beginning to end.
CommBank app’s offers personalized view of carbon footprint and a enables purchasing credits to offset
Commonwealth Bank of Australia is to provide personalised carbon footprints for customers based on their spending data in a partnership with fintech start-up CoGo. The first phase of the partnership will allow a select group of retail customers to view their carbon footprint via the CommBank app and offset their previous month’s transactions by purchasing carbon credits. This new feature will be available to all retail customers next year. The programme will eventually expand to include select small business customers. giving them greater visibility of their monthly carbon emissions across their supply chain. The partnership will provide greater transparency for customers so that they can take actionable steps to reduce their environmental footprint. The data capability will provide greater personalisation for customers overtime, including more granular information about their carbon footprint with the option to offset individual transactions.
HSBC taps Google Cloud to run multiple ‘what if’ climate risk scenarios simultaneously for its trading book
- HSBC has developed a new credit ranking tool capable of running multiple ‘what if’ climate risk scenarios simultaneously on Google Cloud. The bank plans to use the tool to measure the impact of climate change risk on its trading book, identifying the capital requirements necessary to cover potential rating downgrades and default risk of credit products, such as corporate bonds. The system harnesses the power of cloud computing, where billions of data points are generated, with results delivered in minutes, allowing HSBC traders to better manage their trading portfolios on an intraday basis. The computing power of Google Cloud makes it much quicker to run complex simulations for many different ‘what if’ scenarios, providing a more holistic risk picture of trading for optimum decision-making.
Citi integrates ESG and multi-currency notional pooling capabilities to meet Treasury objectives
Citi has launched its multi-currency notional pooling (MCNP) capabilities in Luxembourg, with a unique integrated ESG offering attached. The offering will allow clients to harness , automated ESG investments options and wider liquidity management capabilities, including target balancing, multi-bank target balancing, cross-currency sweeps and virtual accounts to meet their Treasury objectives. Citi has expanded its ESG offering as part of the launch, by fully integrating notional pooling with a new range of ESG Money Market Fund options, available via an automated sweep from Luxembourg based accounts. This automation, combined with enhanced treasury workstation integration, enables Citi’s clients to participate in sustainable short-time investments and automate their ESG initiatives end-to-end.