According to a press release published on February 8, the Carbonplace blockchain carbon credit transaction network has secured $45 million in an investment round from nine founding banks with a combined $9 trillion in assets under management. The banks are BBVA, BNP Paribas, CIBC, Itaú Unibanco, National Australia Bank, NatWest, Standard Chartered, SMBC, and UBS. The London-based fintech also announced it will become an independent entity, led by new CEO Scott Eaton.
As stated by Carbonplace, the company will use the investment to strengthen its platform and workforce, in order to expand its services to a larger client base of financial institutions and seek partnerships with other carbon market players, such as registries and stock exchanges around the world. . Carbonplace has been described as “SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications] of the carbon market” which will allow participants to share carbon data in real time, ensuring secure and traceable transactions.
Commenting on the development, Robert Begbie, CEO of NatWest Markets, cited data from McKinsey which showed that “global demand for voluntary carbon credits is likely to increase by a factor of 15 in the next few years.” He says Carbonplace is uniquely positioned to meet that demand by offering scalable technology to environmentally conscious businesses.
While the service is expected to be launched by the end of this year, Carbonplace has been pilot trading with companies such as Visa and Climate Impact X. Carbonplace uses its own distributed ledger technology to facilitate offset transactions and says the digital wallet is a tool to “reliably enable owners. demonstrate ownership to the market, reducing the risk of double counting and simplifying reporting.”
