The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and a the leading Chinese online financial service provider Ant Financial Services Group (Ant Financial) rolled out an innovative programme the ‘Green Digital Finance Alliance’ at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, aiming to stimulate the advancement of digital technologies in green finance.
The Green Digital Finance Alliance is a unique partnership ensuring that can align tomorrow’s fintech-powered (financial technology) global financial system with sustainable development.
Financing sustainable development, as one of the greatest challenges at the moment, requires ambition, innovation, and commitment, underpinned by effective collaboration.
The new initiative is committed to driving environmental risks, opportunities, incentives and choices into the decision-making across the financing value chain. And these can be achieved through market innovation, collaborative action and increased public awareness of sustainable development and green lifestyle choices.
One such innovation is Ant Financial’s app, which provides users with a carbon account, in addition to their credit and saving accounts.
Ant’s 450 million users in China are now able to benchmark their carbon footprint and to earn “green energy” credits for reducing their footprint.
Moreover, Ant Financial has integrated this function into a social media experience, as well as committing to a complementary, tree-planting carbon offset programme. As of today, 72 million users are participating in the app.