Banking services company Aspiration Partners Inc. has built its business around finding ways for customers to “both do well and do good,” and its latest product is aimed at consumers worried about the environmental impact of their spending.
The Marina del Rey-based company announced March 24 that it will launch a credit card called Aspiration Zero that will allow users to offset their carbon footprints by making purchases.
“Over the past eight years, Aspiration has really created a category around socially conscious, sustainable daily finance,” said Chief Executive Andrei Cherny. “People spend, save, shop and invest more with the ability to make a sustainable impact while they do so.”
Each time a user makes a purchase with the company’s new credit card, Aspiration will work with reforestation organizations around the world to plant a tree on the customer’s behalf.
Card holders can also choose to round up a purchase to the nearest dollar to fund one additional tree planting for each purchase they make.
Cherny said that with about 30 purchases — and 60 trees planted — a customer can offset the amount of carbon emissions produced by a typical American consumer in a given month.
Once users have made enough purchases with the card to achieve carbon neutrality, the company rewards them with up to 1% cash back on additional purchases.
The company said more than 5 million trees have been planted through its customers’ purchases.
“We wanted to do something really special here that stayed true to our values and why people join Aspiration in the first place,” Cherny said.
The company launched in 2013 around a unique “pay what is fair” model for investing fees and a commitment to sustainability, like promising customers’ deposits won’t be directed toward funding fossil fuel projects.
The new credit card will round out the company’s line of services aimed at eco-conscious consumers, including sustainability impact scores and a tool that offsets a user’s driving emissions through a monthly fee.
“A lot of Americans really want to align their money with their values,” Cherny said.
