IDEMIA collaborates with ClimateSeed to invest in carbon project in India to offer truly sustainable payment cards

by Suman Gupta

Mumbai, June 4, 2021– IDEMIA, the global leader in Augmented Identity, has teamed up with leading global social initiative ClimateSeed to support its CO2 emissions offset project in India, to offer GREENPAY cards to its Indian and its global customers. IDEMIA is the preferred partner for India’s leading public, private sector, MNC banks & Fintechs. It has to its credit one of the largest corporate adoptions of biometric security for access and attendance for all of India’s top 20 banking organizations.

ClimateSeed, a leading social initiative launched by BNP Paribas in collaboration with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus will help IDEMIA in offsetting and compensating the residual footprint with investment in various sustainability projects. These projects are not only doing the environment good, but also contributing to several of the other 16 United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

With GREENPAY, IDEMIA is taking an end-to-end sustainability approach to the entire payment card lifecycle – from chip module to card body, to digital customer onboarding, to card personalization & fulfillment, to transport, to recycling once expired. GREENPAY aims to minimize the carbon footprint of payment cards by reducing and recycling at every step of this life cycle. These efforts are dramatically decreasing the footprint and for the residual footprint.

IDEMIA’s first project in this joint initiative with ClimateSeed will be in the “Khasi Hills community Carbon project”, employing 5,000-plus people, conserving existing and regenerating degraded forests in Meghalaya, north-eastern India. The young, regenerating forests are absorbing carbon at an annual rate of 1.75 tC/ha.

Amanda Gourbault, IDEMIA Executive VP Financial Institutions, said: “We are proud to be living up to our climate change pledges. We believe we should take real-life steps to help preserve the environment. Thanks to our ClimateSeed partnership, we are doing our bit to achieving a zero carbon economy and to champion sustainable development.”

Arnaud Despontin, IDEMIA VP Corporate Social Responsibility, said: “This project is a major step towards the achievement of our CSR goals to uphold and step up our support for local communities – specifically the underprivileged – while advocating more effective environmental conservation. IDEMIA staff selected the following four key priorities in a company-wide survey: Climate action, no poverty, clean water,sanitation and quality education. This venture furthers three out of the four goals, namely climate action, quality education and reducing poverty.”

Amit Kakatikar, Regional Director- Financial Institutions, India, said:  ‘From reducing the carbon footprint of the card to implementing eco-designed packaging, and replacing paper with digital services, everyone in the payment ecosystem has a part to play to ensure that we deliver to our consumers a payment tool with the lowest possible carbon footprint. There is only one planet Earth, we all have a responsibility to protect it. Our Banking and Fintech partners in India are excited to adopt Green payment initiatives. Their enthusiasm is further augmented by IDEMIA’s investment in a project that builds a better India.”

For decades, the “take-make-waste” model has ruled the global economy. However, we are now seeing a paradigm shift in Banks’ and fintechs’ strategic values; they are seeking a “reduce-recycle-offset” model to reduce their carbon footprint and preserve the planet. There is also a strong appetite in the market for greener solutions, as customers are becoming more deeply committed to the protection of the environment.

About IDEMIA: IDEMIA, the global leader in Augmented Identity, provides a trusted environment enabling citizens and consumers alike to perform their daily critical activities (such as pay, connect and travel), in the physical as well as digital space.

Securing our identity has become mission critical in the world we live in today. By standing for Augmented Identity, an identity that ensures privacy and trust and guarantees secure, authenticated and verifiable transactions, we reinvent the way we think, produce, use and protect one of our greatest assets – our identity – whether for individuals or for objects, whenever and wherever security matters. We provide Augmented Identity for international clients from Financial, Telecom, Identity, Public Security and IoT sectors. With close to 15,000 employees around the world, IDEMIA serves clients in 180 countries.