Sustainability Thoughts from the Payment Industry

A recent article on the Raconteur website ¹ looked at what the payment industry is doing on decarbonisation. It is worth having a look at what others are doing, particularly since cash is sometimes looked at in the frame of payments generally.

The article offers five areas for effort:

1. Rationalise and consolidate systems 

The example used is North American Bancard, the parent company of PayAnywhere, which consolidated its systems and operations from six to two sites. All now use 100% renewable energy. Its call centres staff use energy efficient Chromebook devices.

When one reads claims about using renewable energy, based on the recent presentation by the University of Edinburgh Business School at the Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum™, the first question is whether the renewable energy was additional or not.