Sustainability at GoCardless

We are committed to reducing our impact on the environment and to leaving a more sustainable world for future generations.

Read our action planLearn more

Economic sustainability
By helping our customers get paid, our platform plays an important role in creating economic sustainability for businesses and the wider economy.
Communities and the natural world
We need to ensure that in the process of creating economic value, we are conscious of the wellbeing of communities and the natural environment.
Sustainability progress
We are continuously measuring and reviewing our progress. We are also creating tools to help our business partners to also create sustainability plans.

Our commitment

In 2021, we became co-founders of the Tech Zero coalition, a group of businesses committed to taking climate action as part of the UNFCC Race To Zero. Since then, we became signatories of Business Ambition for 1.5°C, committing to set both short-term and long-term emissions reductions in line with the Science Based Target initiative Net Zero standard.

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Measuring our impact

Our first step was measuring our greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020, our greenhouse gas emissions were 5459.84 tCO2e. Read our climate impact report 202 here.

We have since improved the accuracy of our measurements and addressed any data gaps in our latest Climate Impact Report. In 2021, our greenhouse gas emissions across scopes 1, 2 and 3 were 7923.24 tCO2e.

Read our 2021 report

Our strategy and action plan

We are pleased to launch our Sustainability Strategy and Net-Zero Action Plan. This sets out our long-term strategy of not only reducing our impact, but seeking opportunities to create positive change.

This also sets out our Science Based Targets:

2027: Short term science based target
2035: Long term science based target (Net-Zero)

Our Net-Zero action plan outlines how we plan to reduce our emissions and reach these targets by working with our customers, suppliers, and our employees.

Read our action plan

Reducing our impact

Reducing our environmental impact is our first important step and we have achieved some key reductions in recent months.

Reduced direct emissions
We have reduced our market based scope 1 & 2 emissions by 90% since 2019, and in 2022 this reduction will reach 99%.
Renewable energy pilot project
We have developed a pilot project with one of our customers (the Big Clean Switch) to ensure the energy use from our customer use of our product - alongside home working energy - is either provided by renewable energy, or matched.
Our Environmental Sustainability Policy
We still have a lot of work to do on our scope 3 emissions. This year, we will be focusing mainly on travel and home working, as set out in our Environmental Sustainability Policy.

Payments, Plastics, People and Planet

We recently worked with environmental consultants Carbon Footprint to understand how plastic pollution and climate change are interlinked.

Some key findings:

In 2021, 17.2 billion cards manufactured, creating 293,525 tCo2e
This is equivalent to driving around the Earth 43,000 times in an average diesel car.
With 20.5 billion cards predicted to be in circulation by 2025, this could rise to 349,841 tCo2e.

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