Berlin FinTech Pliant: First-ever corporate credit card for fully carbon-neutral travel

limate protection is a major challenge for many entrepreneurs. No wonder: after all, climate change is the biggest challenge of the 21st century! “Companies want to do something about climate change, but often don’t know where to start or are afraid of doing it wrong. Often, it’s the employees who want their company to be more involved. The corporate credit card from pliant now offers these companies a simple and effective way to get started: anyone who pays travel expenses with the pliant credit card in the future can automatically neutralize CO2-emissions,” says Malte Rau, CEO and co-founder of pliant.

An easy-to-activate feature in the pliant app takes care of calculating CO2-offsets. “TheCorona crisis challenged many habits. In the lockdown, travel came to a standstill from one day to the next, and business travel no longer existed. Not only with the re-openings after the pandemic we ask ourselves: do we really want to go back to the old everywhere?” says Fabian Terner, CPO and co-founder of pliant. And he adds “We at pliant are therefore making companies an offer: Carbon neutral travel at no costs. Quite simply activatable in our app.”

In addition to functionality, the pliant earth credit card will be available from July. With this additional card, CO2-compensationis automatically activated permanently. The card expresses this commitment of the user through its modern design on the “earth” theme. “We believe that companies and employees want to express their values through a credit card. pliant stands for the business credit card of a new generation of companies.” Fabian Terner continues.

Credit card companies generate revenue through fees paid by vendors. pliant can leverage potential through automation and technological potential in onboarding, underwriting and the card’s online features to pass on revenue to its customers in the form of cashbacks. “This allows us to offer the highest cashbacks in the market, instead of creating false incentives with bonus miles. Now our customers can even use their benefits automatically for climate protection. The airline or railroad company as the polluter bears the costs for compensation in the end” says Malte Rau and adds “companies with high marketing expenses and lower travel volume, still get higher cashbacks paid out with pliant than elsewhere, even though their trips are compensated in a carbon neutral way at the same time.”

Here’s how it works: Imagine traveling by plane from Berlin to Munich, taking a taxi from the airport to the city and staying 3 nights in a 4-starhotel. In this case, pliant measures and neutralizes your CO2-emissions as follows:

Flight route (roundtrip)

1010 km x 0,17147  kg CO2 / km* = 173,18 kg CO2

+ Taxi ride (roundtrip)

74 km x 0,23 kg CO2 / km* = 17,02 kg CO2

+ 3 overnight stay

3 x 18,5 kg CO2 /  nights** = 55,50 kg CO2

= Overall CO2 emissions

245,70 kg CO2

Assuming a CO2-price of 15€ per ton, the compensation of this trip would cost 3.71€. If the total travel costs amount to e.g. 500€, the 3.71€ can be completely offset.

* according to https://ghgprotocol.org/

** according to https://biohotels.de/CO2-Fussabdruck