For years, the global financial ecosystem has been responsible for producing high carbon emissions (1.8x the UK’s annual net carbon emissions to be exact). In 2019, Greenpeace UK and WWF discovered that UK banks and asset managers were producing 805 million tonnes of CO2.

Now, we’re beginning to witness a fundamental change as the industry turns a new, greener, leaf. UK Fintech is becoming a leading enabler of carbon-neutral finance, powering the transition to net-zero emissions.

Yapily is doing its part by enabling platforms like KashFlow to help SMEs keep track of their financial behaviour and reduce their carbon footprint. We’re also helping our customers reach their own net-zero targets by reducing our own carbon emissions as part of their supply chain.

As we come together to celebrate what has been achieved over the past year, we’re continuing to recognise what more can be achieved over the next 12 months.

We’re going carbon neutral

To accelerate our mission to net-zero, we’ve joined TechZero: a task force of leading tech companies committed to tackling the climate crisis together.

We’ve pledged to halve our emissions by 2030 and become completely neutral by 2050 (although as impatient pioneers, we plan to achieve these targets much sooner). To get started, we will begin offsetting all carbon emissions from 2021 onwards.

To ensure we remain accountable, we’re also committing to:

• Appoint a member of our leadership team to be responsible and accountable for our net-zero target
• Measure and report our annual carbon emissions to stakeholders, customers and the public via our website
• Publish our ongoing journey towards net-zero
• Work to maintain net-zero status once our goal has been reached

“I am incredibly passionate about climate change and the global environment. One of the reasons I founded Yapily is to contribute to better, fairer services — whether it’s through banking the unbanked population, providing access to affordable products, or measuring carbon emissions. We power many companies who share our vision and, in turn, are leveraging open banking to build innovative products that are contributing to a better society. This is our first step towards being climate positive and I can’t wait to see our progress as individuals and as a company.” Stefano Vaccino, Founder and CEO at Yapily

Partnering with Lune to reach our goals

We’re pleased to announce that we’re partnering with Lune to measure our carbon footprint and take immediate action by neutralising our emissions. Lune specialises in connecting businesses like Yapily with high-quality carbon projects that are curated based on the projects’ goals and capacity for driving measurable climate impact. We look forward to announcing the projects we’ll be working on in the near future.

Reducing our footprint in the office

Actions speak louder than words, which is why we’re taking our first, small, steps toward reducing carbon emissions in the Yapily office. From our lunchtime to our coffee breaks, we’re looking at how we can be as environmentally friendly as possible. This includes:

• Encouraging our team to take their own mugs to our favourite coffee shop across the road, avoiding the use of plastic cups and lids

• Moving away from single-use plastic coffee pods in favour of beans to reduce waste

• Encouraging colleagues to bring their lunch in reusable containers and use kitchen cutlery rather than plastic alternatives. We also provide reusable containers in the office that the team can take to their favourite lunch spots, in favour of single-use containers.

Looking to a green financial future

The global financial ecosystem is waking up to the need for transparency when reporting carbon emissions. Fintech companies have an opportunity to help customers and businesses offset their carbon footprint by building the financial tools they need to become more sustainable. At Yapily, we’re proud to be enabling these fintechs through the power of open banking and will continue to strive to do our bit to contribute to a green financial future.