The Tipping Point for Climate FinTech: Conversation with Handprint
In the latest Finstep Tipping Point Thought Leadership Series, Finstep Asia Founder, Musheer Ahmed is in conversation with Simon JD Schillebeeck, the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Handprint, about how FinTechs can increasingly contribute to make a positive impact on climate change. They discuss how Handprint can provide a platform for companies to take responsibility and offset their carbon footprint.
View the recording of the interview below:
Read the Summary of the conversation below:
Story Behind co-Founding Handprint
Musheer and Simon started the conversation by discussing what motivated Simon to start Handprint. Simon co-founded a non-profit organisation called Global Mangrove Trust, out of which grew Handprint in 2019. Handprint’s initial focus was to create a convincing, credible and highly efficient tool for e-commerce organisations to communicate to their customers at the moment of checkout, which conveys that every purchase contributes to doing something good for the world; that was the beginning of handprint back in early 2020.
Reason for Choosing e-Commerce as the First Port of Call
With Handprint, the reason for primarily focussing on e-commerce was that e-commerce as an industry has a lot of reach and as retail commerce was dead during the pandemic, it was the main way in which companies interacted with their customers. “Consumers are increasingly demanding that companies don't just do less bad for the world but actively involve themselves in doing something good for the world”, which makes Handprint appealing to organisations, said Simon.
Functionality of Handprint’s Tech
Simon explains that Handprint is two things in one. On one side of the multi-sided market, they partner with NGOs that are involved in projects like reforestation, coral reef reconstruction, ocean plastic cleanup but also social projects like women empowerment, education, etc., digitise them and function as their commercial agent.
He continues to explain that on the other side there are companies that want to do something good for the world like buy 100 trees or pay for the removal of plastic. Simon explains that they have created a technology that listens to digital transactions and with every transaction it sends a message that incorporates a pledge of the company to send a small micro donation to a specific project. Handprint is working in a variety of use cases like recently they used their technology for an event with Lazada in Singapore; 1 tree for 1 RSVP.
Simon says that what is interesting about their technology is that it suggests that a company’s growth can be really good for the planet by, for example, activating the company's KBIs in the next five years so as long as the company meets their KBIs they're going to do something good for the world.
Metrics of the Regenerative Target Calculator
Simon states, “The name is not finalised at the moment it is called the Paris Agreement Regenerative Target or the ‘PART Calculator’.”
Simon explains people working in Fintech companies or a vast majority of people that work in an industry that isn’t directly making, moving or mining things (that is in manufacturing, production or transportation) can do only limited things in the sustainability space because their environmental footprint is extremely small. The best they can do is, for example, buy green electricity.
The philosophy behind the PART calculator as Simon states is, “What it basically does is that it assigns much higher responsibility to organisations that create high paying jobs but actually don’t have a lot of negative environmental impact so what we are saying is that you guys should do more.”
How FinTech Companies can Make a Climate Change Beyond Offsetting the Carbon Footprint
Simon stated that for fintech companies, financial inclusion is a big theme in the broader sustainability agenda. In terms of climate, the verification of impact is important. Simon states that his main interest is that if you’re creating a business then realising if you’re doing something good in the world is important. Every business, especially Fintech companies, now increasingly has this responsibility, to connect their growth to doing something good in the world. He said, “I think this is really where the world is moving to and where the fintech space is going to move to as well simply because the need at the moment is so high.”
3 Most Urgent Trends that Fintech can Address
Simon states that one urgent problem that can be addressed is impact credibility. He says, “if you buy a kilo of plastic that some NGO in another part of the world is removing from the ocean how do you know that NGO is not double, triple or quadruple selling that. You are entirely relying on trust ” He says that developing systems that enable us to create more verification instead of trust is incredibly important.
The second trend according to Simon is real time feedback in the impact space. He emphasises the reporting by companies and NGOs as well in terms of creating either positive or negative impacts is highly discontinuous. This creates an opportunity to create tools for visualisation for credible reporting that engages the audience in a very productive way.
Another pressing issue is financing. Simon states that a lot of work is going on in terms of what banks are doing to adjust their portfolio of loan companies and updating the criteria under which you can have a preferential interest rate around the world and fintech companies can play a role in facilitating this.
How NFTs can Contribute Positively to Climate Change
Simon states that when talking about Fintech it is impossible not to talk about NFTs. He thinks that connecting NFTs to doing something good is a very simple idea but can be incredibly powerful like if someone sells a NFT at market price premium then the percentage of that sale can go back to an impact partner. In the future people can have an account where they’ll store not only their digital NFTs and also their digital proof that they have hundreds of trees and 70 kilos of plastic and that they went volunteering there. This becomes a kind of a social currency saying ‘I’ve done a lot of good in the world’ and that that’s going to influence job prospects positively. “I think the fintech space is going to be the space that enables this in an incredible way.” concludes Simon.