Climate fintech Lune joins the Visa Partner Connect program

The climate crisis is at a critical stage. Humans have put hundreds of billions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, and we are deforesting at an unprecedented rate globally. In parallel with large-scale decarbonisation, it is important that we scale carbon removal solutions to remove atmospheric CO₂ and accelerate efforts to stop deforestation. Lune believes that carbon offsets are one of the best tools for financing initiatives that help remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and those that protect and care for nature.

Today, voluntary carbon markets attract criticism for being flooded with projects of questionable quality and lacking transparency about their real impact. Nevertheless, carbon offsets (including carbon removal and emission avoidance³) are one of many important tools to tackle the climate crisis and reach global net zero goals. But ensuring the quality of these offset credits and real environmental impact is crucial.

Visa has set its own climate targets, deepening its commitment to sustainability by pledging net-zero emissions by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. Visa also completed the transition to 100% renewable energy use in 2020 and achieved carbon neutrality across its global operations.⁴

In December 2022, Visa Europe established a sustainability solutions team as part of its commitment to make payments greener. The new team, led by Steve King, will work with customers and partners across Visa’s network to design and create more sustainable products and solutions for, and with, the wider payments ecosystem.

Lune is a software company with a focus on high quality carbon offsetting. Today, Lune’s platform is used by companies such as IDEO, GoCardless and Moomin to buy controlled carbon credits in a transparent way. In addition, companies such as Salesforce, Payhawk and Tred Lune are using software to embed climate action⁵ into their own products to better serve their customers.

Using Lune’s platform and API for emissions calculations and high-quality carbon offsets, Visa’s customers and partners can now:

Contribute to high-quality carbon projects, from afforestation to direct air capture and more, as part of their overall commitment to take action on their own carbon footprint and move towards net zero.
Merchants can launch a carbon-neutral checkout experience⁶ using Lune’s API and software tools for high-quality emissions calculations and carbon offsets.
Banks, fintechs and card issuers can offer users a way to contribute to climate projects directly through their banking apps, using Lune’s API and quality carbon offset software tools, helping their users take climate action and generate impact at scale.
Companies working with Lune today do so primarily because of Lune’s focus on sourcing and controlling impactful carbon projects in addition to the automation their software provides. This means that companies can feel confident in delivering real impact in a transparent manner.

And given that today’s end consumers are looking for more sustainable options when making purchases, it also offers great commercial opportunities for sellers.

In fact, research conducted by Lune found that 71% of consumers surveyed want to see a “green payment method” that tackles climate change, and 77% would remain loyal to a brand that offers automated offsetting at checkout.⁷

Jeni Mundy, Global SVP Merchant Sales & Acquiring at Visa, comments on the collaboration: “Sustainability is a growing focus in the payments ecosystem, and we are building our capabilities at Visa to meet this demand. Through our partnership with Lune, we aim to make it easier for our customers to take meaningful climate action, by building emissions calculations and carbon compensation into their product offering.”

Erik Stadigh, managing director and co-founder of Lune, adds: “Our mission is to drive climate action on a large scale. We are proud that we will be able to offer our carbon projects to Visa’s global network of merchants, banks and partners.”

One of Lune’s clients, Dean Malmgren at IDEO, comments: “Lune’s diverse and high-quality project packages allowed us to significantly reduce the risk to our climate strategy in line with the Oxford Offsetting Principles. We considered a number of suppliers, and we are delighted to be working with Lune.”