Context & creative challenge

To address mindless mass consumption and educate around impact, the creative team launched the Åland Index beta version in 2017 in partnership with the Bank of Åland, the world’s first methodology for CO2 impact per credit card transaction. It positioned Ålandsbanken as a sustainability frontrunner, achieving global recognition as a creative idea that transformed the credit card into a vehicle for more informed purchase decisions.

The challenge then was to scale a creative idea into a global solution, providing a standard in environmental impact calculations available to all.

Strategy

Research confirms strong consumer interest for climate-friendly banking services, but also reveals a lack of available tools. Our insights stem from both public data and joint research with the UN, WWF, IKEA, Mastercard, and Stockholm School of Economics.

Our strategy was to partner with leading banks, using a One-to-Many approach for distribution, to build and implement fully automated environmental impact calculations on global scale.

We created powerful, unorthodox strategic partnerships:

1. Mastercard – global distribution with 2.9 billion credit cards.

2. UN Climate Change – science based global climate expertise.

3. Standard & Poor’s Global Trucost – leading data institute for environmental impact and societal cost of CO2.

The partnerships strategy was to attract diametrically different expertise to a mutual goal thus setting the standard in calculating the environmental impact of financial transactions. Scaling this strategy, the Doconomy Impact API allows for connections to services providing product-level environmental impact calculations leading to even greater accuracy.

Creative idea

The creative idea was to reinvent the credit card as a vehicle for conscious consumption by creating the Doconomy Impact API, the world’s first API for environmental impact calculations, efficiently scaling the Åland Index methodology globally.

By enabling all banks to connect with the Doconomy Impact API we aimed to rewire the financial system creating the breeding ground for digital services that will trigger positive behavior change at scale. Banks and brands around the world can now engage users daily to track, measure, and reduce their environmental impact in line with CO2 reduction targets. The idea was driven by the need to educate the masses and insights about the lack of accessibility, comparability, educational impact metrics, and automated calculations.

Execution

2018: Doconomy is founded with the ambition to scale Åland Index globally through a global Impact API, taking a creative idea to a scalable solution.

2019: The API is successfully launched, enabling banks to calculate average CO2 impact per transaction. The carbon emission limit (DO Black) is launched to position the Impact API.

2020: A portfolio of SDKs for banks is launched, to shorten go-to-market and accelerate engagement. The platform for product level carbon footprint calculations (2030 Calculator) is launched.

2021: Mastercard implements the service on their Global Platform, (Carbon Calculator powered by Doconomy). H2O impact calculation is launched in partnership with S&P. A lifestyle impact assessment tool (Lifestyle Calculator) is launched at COP26 with the UN.

2022: Doconomy’s Impact API now reaches over 500 million users through its partners.