Company Will Empower Users to Fight Climate Change, Live More Sustainably and Offset Their Carbon Footprint Easily with the Carbon Zero Visa Credit Card, Set to Launch Early 2022
Carbon Zero Financial, a social impact fintech firm that will empower users of the Carbon Zero Visa credit card to automatically measure, monitor, and offset their carbon footprints, announced the appointment of Cathryn Peirce as Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Peirce will lead the mission-driven financial services company as they provide an easy and automatic way for people to neutralize the environmental impact of their everyday spending. The credit card is set to become available to consumers in early 2022, but you can join the waitlist now to get early access to the Carbon Zero app for tracking and offsetting your carbon footprint as you spend.
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Visa has been announced as Carbon Zero’s partner of choice to help it deliver a service that quantifiably enables consumers to track the impact of their spending. Carbon Zero’s Visa branded cards will focus on the allocation of rewards points into diverse and credible carbon offsetting projects that neutralize the card holder’s carbon footprint. As card holders spend, they receive a custom calculation of their carbon footprint that they can view in the Carbon Zero app. Carbon Zero then offsets the card holder’s carbon footprint by investing the standard interchange fee paid by merchants into a diverse portfolio of carbon removal projects.
“We’re building pathways that will enable people to more effectively act and transact according to their concern for the planet,” says Carbon Zero CEO Cathryn Peirce. “Our research clearly demonstrates that people want to do more to fight climate change, and businesses have a crucial role to play in supporting those efforts. Our community will be able to look up their carbon footprint with the same ease that they look up their transaction history, and know exactly how their footprint is being offset. Planting trees simply isn’t enough. We need to employ diverse methodologies for carbon offsetting and transparently report back to users on how impact is being achieved.”
Peirce’s appointment marks a powerful endorsement of the next generation of socially conscious leaders. At only 27 years old, she stands out among her peers, with the average age of CEOs being mid 50s and only roughly 8% of Fortune 500 companies being led by women.
“Carbon Zero is here to disrupt the business-as-usual mentality that has been so harmful to people and the planet, and Peirce’s appointment is a clear example of that bold vision,” says Carbon Zero advisor Maren Costa, a celebrated climate and labor activist and Microsoft executive. “Cathryn completely impressed me with her intelligence, intersectional analysis of climate change, experience, and energy. I’m very excited to see what she accomplishes.”
“Visa is excited to be chosen as the network of choice for the Carbon Zero credit card, which offers another innovative example of integrating climate action with payments, an important step as we transition to a low-carbon economy,” said Douglas Sabo, Chief Sustainability Officer, Visa. “We congratulate Cathryn Peirce on her appointment, and look forward to working with forward-leaders like Cathryn and Carbon Zero to advance our shared goals around climate during this decisive decade of action.”
Cathryn Peirce is a social innovator with experience in behavioral change education, marketing, social impact, media, community mobilization, and sales. Prior to joining Carbon Zero, she served as the Director of Marketing at Compass for one of New York City’s most successful brokerage teams.
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For the past 8 years, Peirce has also worked in systemizing social change through workshops on bystander intervention and consultations for private institutions on the standardization of shared ethics. Peirce led Philadelphia’s largest chapter of the global anti-violence movement: V-Day International, graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania, and received a Fulbright Fellowship to develop social programming for youth in Ivory Coast, West Africa. In her personal time, Peirce serves as co-founder and co-facilitator of Share the Wealth: free workshops on financial planning for women.
“As a mission-based company, Carbon Zero is extremely fortunate to have landed Cathryn for this leadership role,” says advisor Richard Arnold, prior CFO of Charles Schwab. “She is amazingly smart, globally conscious, and a highly skilled marketer. But most importantly, she is, like us, passionately committed to making the world a better place.”
Carbon Zero differentiates itself from other cards and apps in the industry by offering greater specificity and transparency into the carbon calculation and offsetting process. While some resources provide estimations of a person’s carbon footprint based on lifestyle questions or national averages, Carbon Zero provides a highly personalized carbon footprint calculation based on an individual’s actual spending. In so doing, Carbon Zero can also point to the specific behaviors users should modify to most effectively reduce their carbon footprint.
After calculating the carbon footprint of a user, Carbon Zero neutralizes that footprint by partnering with Patch, an API-first marketplace for carbon removal. Patch’s expansive and diversified network of carbon offset and removal projects ensures the greatest impact per dollar invested. This partnership also enables Carbon Zero to provide a more transparent, engaging, and educational user experience with information on how projects work, where they are located, how their efficacy is verified, and more. With the Carbon Zero app, users can check their net carbon footprint, learn more about the offsetting projects they’re funding, receive tailored sustainability suggestions, and manage their account. Meanwhile, the Carbon Zero affiliate marketplace provides opportunities for cashback and spotlights brands vetted for their sustainability practices.
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