Replanting company Ecosia is powering a new wooden debit card named TreeCard that will use 80% of its profits to plant new trees.
The new sustainably-sourced cherry wood cards will make the merchants you use it for pay a small fee. In the end, every $60 spent plants a new tree.
“TreeCard is a free top-up debit card that uses merchant transaction fees to plant trees,” said Jamie Cox, co-founder of TreeCard, when speaking with Ecosia. “You can use it alongside your regular bank, so you don’t need to switch banks. It’s super simple to set up and use.”
TreeCard will also come with an app that helps users track their spending and see the impact it is having on the planet. Moreover, they will be able to keep track of how many trees their transactions have helped plant.
“TreeCard also supports Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay, so you can use it as a virtual debit card,” Cox said.
Having used Ecoisa during his time at university, Cox said that the idea to launch TreeCard came from his mum. “[She] has used Ecosia to plant 4,000 trees,” Cox continued. “She was like: ‘I wish I could attach Ecosia to my bank card so I could plant trees.’ She was just saying it as a daydream, but I thought her dream was a genius idea.”
He added that he was also inspired by David Attenborough. “Watching his work and his recent documentaries really brought home to me how urgent climate action really is,” Cox said. “He maintains such a positive outlook, and gives us hope that we can change the state of the world. For me that’s been such an inspiration.”
However, TreeCard is not the only tree-planting initiative in the FinTech space. Both UK-based Starling Bank and its Dutch rival bunq have announced initiatives. In
Starling’s case, the neobank has pledged to plant one tree for every successful new personal and business customer referral.
bunq has committed to planting one new tree in Madagascar for every €100 spent, hopping to have planted one million trees by February 2021.
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