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

Climate protection instead of bonus miles - New Pliant earth credit card announced for climate-conscious companies: real sustainability made easy at no costs from July onwards.

  • Pliant sets new incentives: cashbacks instead of bonus miles and fully automatic CO₂ neutralization for trips

  • Climate protection is the challenge of the century: App feature makes CO₂-compensation easy for companies with the Pliant business credit card

  • New credit card Pliant earth announced for climate-conscious companies: real sustainability quite simply at no extra cost from July onwards

  • CEO and co-founder Malte Rau: "The card industry pours out billions via bonus programmes that incentivise more travel. You could do a lot of good with this money. We at Pliant are making a start."

Berlin, 1 July 2021: Climate 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 is the employees who want their employer 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 their travel expenses with the Pliant credit card in future can automatically neutralise CO₂ emissions," says Malte Rau, CEO and co-founder of Pliant.

An easy-to-activate feature in the Pliant app takes care of calculating the CO₂ offset. "The Corona crisis challenged many habits. In the lockdown, travel stood still from one day to the next, business travel no longer existed. It is not only with the post-pandemic openings that we are asking the question: do we really want to go back to the old everywhere?" says Fabian Terner, CPO and co-founder of Pliant. And he adds, "That's why we at Pliant are making companies an offer: CO₂-neutral travel at no extra charge. It's very easy to activate in our app."

In addition to the functionality, the Pliant earth credit card will be available from July. With this additional card, CO₂ compensation is automatically activated permanently. The card expresses this commitment of the user through its modern design on the theme of "earth". "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 their revenues through fees paid by sellers. Pliant can leverage potential through automation and technological potential in onboarding, risk assessment and the card's online functions and pass on revenues 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 railway company as the polluter bears the costs for compensation in the end," says Malte Rau and adds, "Companies with high marketing expenses and not such a high travel volume still get higher cashbacks paid out with Pliant than elsewhere, even though their trips are compensated in a climate-neutral way at the same time."

Here's how it works: Imagine travelling by plane from Berlin to Munich, taking a taxi from the airport to the city and staying 3 nights in a 4-star hotel. In this case, Pliant measures and neutralises 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 / night** = 55.50 kg CO₂

Total 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 ghgprotocol.org
** according to biohotels.de

About Pliant:
Pliant offers its customers the very latest generation of corporate credit cards. This includes fully digital card management, seamless integrations with accounting and expense management solutions, as well as high limits and attractive cashbacks.

Press contact:
press@getpliant.com