Klarna’s Latest Innovation Addresses Climate Change

Klarna has moved stridently forward on its 1% pledge to the planet with two big initiatives. The first, and most noteworthy, is a partnership with Doconomy to provide all customers with the carbon footprint insights from all their purchases through Klarna. The second is a literal 1% pledge, through the offering of 1% of the fintech’s latest funding round to important initiatives supporting the planet’s health. These actions show a vital gesture toward sustainability that will accelerate a necessary trend from other fintechs.

With the goal to democratize access to unbiased climate impact information for consumers, Klarna’s partnership with Mastercard-backed Doconomy will help shoppers make more informed purchases. Just like how our packaged foods display the breakdown of sugars, carbs, and fats, Klarna users will now receive a breakdown of their purchases’ carbon footprint provided by Doconomy’s Aland Index.

Speaking on this Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna said, “This type of information shouldn’t be a premium or luxury that consumers pay for, but rather an essential part of every shopping journey. We all make decisions that affect the health of the planet and it’s essential that everyone has sound information to make smart climate choices in a simple and straightforward way.”

For Klarna’s 90 million users and 250,000 retailers, this free service will be very useful in demonstrating the unknown impact of their goods and services. Previously this information would either be hard to measure or costly to obtain, preventing shoppers from keeping the environment as a top priority. While understanding the cost of their consumption is one thing, Klarna is allowing more environmentally concerned and financially able shoppers to donate to relevant planet-conscious initiatives through an in-built donation tool housed in the app. While seemingly simple, these two in-app improvements will go a long way in shaping a more conscious consumer and will signal to manufacturers the need to consider the carbon footprint of their products.

Klarna’s 1% donation from its most recent funding round will be used to launch giveone.com. The platform will be run by a committee of experts that have been rounded up to determine the most impactful global solutions to climate change that will be funded through the pledge. All off the donations made by the pledge will be made public in order to provide visibility to consumers as well as inspiration to like-minded companies.

Klarna is proving that it is serious about climate action with large and impactful measures put in place to both inform and educate its 90 million customers, as well as through donation to selective causes. With Klarna as the leading example, if other fintechs follow suit, it will be possible to take major strides toward more sustainable business practices in the financial services industry and beyond.