Sustainability Superheroes in Fintech

PrettyLittleThing sponsored Love Island’s Gemma Owen to champion its ‘pre-loved’ fashion marketplace this year, encouraging shoppers to sell clothes instead of throwing them away. However, it still expects to launch 956 new fashion items into the hands of hungry consumers this week. Did someone say greenwashing?

It’s one thing to say, ‘Climate change matters; we should all do something about it’. It is quite another to design the entire business around ESG goals. Especially in fintech, when it is more difficult to see our effect on the environment and society.

Some of the Payments Association’s members have tackled this head on, and adapted their businesses with sustainability. Even in fintech, the rules of the game are changing. Since the 1970s, with a broad purpose of capital value creation, the main focus of business managers has been to maximize profits to improve shareholder returns. The new game is sustainability, offers the opportunity to differentiate and attract new markets, but risks allegations of greenwashing. Or even more challenging – telling investors that returns may be more modest if they are to achieve their ESG goals.

Enter the “Sustainability Superheroes” who have developed superpowers through their travels and are at the forefront of building a more sustainable fintech industry. Our first superhero is the head of business development at Algbra, an ethical finance app and card service, Ramsey El Dabbagh. He exemplifies the power of fintechs to improve financial inclusion. Algbra guarantees ethical values ​​through its investments and financing ventures, enabling it to create value-conscious financial options for society, resulting in outstanding sustainability performance and commercial success. Faith-based groups are often underserved, and banking is often linked to unsustainable and unethical practices contrary to many individuals’ beliefs. The Algbra team ensures that their operations and services are ethical, provide principles-first banking and deliver financing options tailored to growing sustainability-focused clients. These principles are fundamentally intertwined with sustainable development, enabling them to promote a spirit of community across the membership base.

Our second Sustainability Superhero is Charlie Bronks, Head of ESG at Wholesale Currency and Cross-Border Payments, Crown Agents Bank, who has a unique history of developing emerging and frontier markets. The bank leverages its networks and deep sector expertise to understand the communities and geographies to transform local economies and provide solutions to promote financial inclusion and sustainable development.

Their superpower uses already established trust with international stakeholders to work with tier one and tier two banks in countries to develop relationships. Crown Agents Bank also works with mobile network operators to promote technology access. For example, biometric solutions help overcome specific problems around identification in countries such as Rwanda, where many home addresses are not formally recognized. Their integration of sustainability with innovation has enabled local people to open bank accounts without a formal address. This community-focused work directly improves financial inclusion outcomes.

Our third sustainability superhero is Nadia Benaissa, Global Marketing Director at BPCBT, a fintech that embraces local knowledge and collaborates with experts to contribute to sustainable development. Nadia explains how tailoring solutions to accommodate those excluded from traditional banking across different urban environments “requires long-term partnerships with local governments, NGOs, international development organizations and businesses”. “BPCBT has provided the opportunity to help our clients grow responsibly and in turn this has helped BPCBT grow their business”, says Nadia. But adaptation is essential to ensure that ESG efforts change with society. BCBBT responded to the COVID-19 changes in payments with a greater focus on contactless payments rather than cash and refocused on spreading these technologies to urban areas, blending greater economic mobility with social benefits. While working with Philippine transportation agencies to integrate cashless and paperless ticketing systems, the BPCBT team kept vulnerable users in mind, embedding students’ and elderly individuals’ free passes on cards or phones, thereby simplifying the adoption process.

Finally, we are seeing changes in how managers are incentivized and rewarded for becoming more sustainable. Our member respondents to EthicsGrade’s 2022 survey for our association show significant plans across the industry to motivate leaders for sustainability, and that an average of seven percent of discretionary pay is tied to ESG performance among our members who responded to the survey.

Instead of doing some fairly small things to deliver on ESG goals, some companies are taking significant steps to cut through the ESG talk in payments.