RHB Bank and BBVA Adopt Eco-Friendly Payment Cards from Idemia to Improve Value Chain

(Credit: Idemia)

Idemia has launched its “Greenpay” offering for financial institutions; the payment card company calls Greenpay an “eco-friendly” card that it says will improve each part of the payment card value chain. RHB Bank and BBVA are two organizations that will soon be offering the eco-friendly card.

The program was designed to move away from today’s “take-make-waste” attitude, the company says. The Greenpay program encompasses eco-friendly solutions for the payment card itself as well as advanced card related services like eco-designed packaging and digital alert and e-documents. Idemia says these and other services from Greenpay enable financial institutions to “deploy their sustainability transformation.”

Greenpay was designed with Idemia’s commitment to improve each part of the payment card value chain by:

• Minimizing the environmental impact of its processes and services;
• Developing innovative, eco-friendly products, services and solutions;
• Helping customers achieve their environmental goals.

Programs already using Greenpay include:

• RHB Bank’s Visa WWF Debit Card-i, a recycled PVC payment card which will be available from July 2020. The company says the cards have passed all durability tests and are ISO-certified and EMV compliant.
• BBVA Bank’s shift to deliver cards made of eco-friendly materials to customers in all countries where it has a presence by the end of 2021.
• French banking-as-a-service company Treezor also offers a low-natural-resource-consuming card.

In 2018, Mastercard launched Greener Payments - in partnership with card manufacturers Gemalto, Gieseck+Devrient, and Idemia - to reduce first-use PVC plastic in card manufacturing.

The majority of payment cards are currently made from PVC plastic, and around six billion payment cards are produced each year, writes Euro News.