Revolutionary digital platform to boost green finance

The Green Digital Finance Alliance is committed to driving forward changes through market innovation. PHOTO/UN
By ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
newsdesk@reporter.co.ke
The ‘Green Digital Finance Alliance’, a ground-breaking initiative to harness digital technologies in catalyzing financing that addresses global environmental challenges, was launched at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland by its two founders, Ant Financial Services Group (Ant Financial), China’s leading online and mobile financial services provider, and UN Environment.
Financing sustainable development is one of the greatest challenge of our times. To meet this challenge will require ambition, innovation, and commitment, underpinned by effective collaboration.
Digital finance can drive environmental risks, opportunities, incentives and choices into the decision-making across the financing value chain. The Green Digital Finance Alliance is committed to driving forward such changes through market innovation, collaborative action and increased public’s awareness of sustainable development and green lifestyle choices.
“The Green Digital Finance Alliance is a unique partnership ensuring that we can align tomorrow’s fintech-powered global financial system with sustainable development. UN Environment is honoured to partner with Ant Financial in making green finance an integral part of the daily life of every individual and business”, said Erik Solheim, Executive Director of UN Environment.
One such innovation is Ant Financials’ app which provides its users with a carbon account alongside their credit and saving accounts. Ant’s 450 million users in China are now able to benchmark their carbon footprint, generated through algorithms of their financial transaction history, and to earn ‘green energy’ credits for reducing their footprint.
Ant Financial has integrated this into a social media experience as well as committing to a complementary, tree-planting carbon offset program. As of today, 72 million users are participating in the app.
The number of people that signed up yesterday alone was nearly the equivalent of the population of Switzerland. Every day tens of millions of users go to their Ant Forest to grow their virtual trees while reducing carbon emissions.
“Ant Financial is a strong believer in green finance. Several of our products and services have been contributing to sustainable development. Leveraging mobile Internet, cloud computing and big data, we can encourage our hundreds of millions of users to participate in a green lifestyle,” said Eric Jing, Chief Executive Officer of Ant Financial.
The Alliance as a global partnership will include innovative digital finance businesses and active stakeholders in accelerating such innovations and scaling their international deployment.