Real-time payments provider Volt and sustainability fintech ekko have entered into a partnership focused on tracking the environmental impact of payments.
The duo will give customers the option to remove a plastic bottle from the ocean by paying with Volt at checkout in retail transactions, with a real-time counter showing how many bottles have been cleared so far.
Jordan Lawrence, Chief Growth Officer and Co-Founder of Volt, said: “I am incredibly excited by what this partnership will bring. The environment is very close to my and Volt’s heart, and solutions like ekko’s help to make the real difference that we believe our sector should strive to do.
“Combining real-time payments with real-time environmental capabilities is the perfect marriage; I’m thrilled for Volt users to gain an accurate representation of the difference they’re making to the planet.”
By partnering with multinational Volt, ekko is expanding the reach of its sustainability payments operation to a range of markets covering the UK, Europe, Brazil and Australia.
The arrangement falls in line with ekko’s ambition to ‘embed sustainability’ in the practice and policies of various payment stakeholders, which the firm’s CEO Oli Cook and Chief Customer Officer Manish Vara broke down to Payment Expert earlier this year.
On the partnership with Volt, Cook remarked: “We have an incredible role to play in fighting the climate crisis, as financial services impact nearly everything we do. We have an opportunity to mobilise people and businesses from every walk of life to do good and to make environmentally friendly choices.
“Working with Volt allows us to expand the horizons of our offering, reaching customers across the world and ultimately increasing support for environmental causes by bringing our real-time tracking capabilities to payments worldwide.