Global technology company Mastercard has announced the acceleration of its initiative to eliminate first-use PVC plastics from its payment cards by 2028. The initiative represents a step into Mastercard’s efforts to bring accessibility to a more sustainable card offering for customers, as a way to reduce and eliminate the environmental impact that their wallet currently has.

The aim of the program is to introduce all newly-Mastercard payment cards built from more sustainable materials by January 1st, 2028 (including recycled or bio-sourced plastics, rPVC, rPET, and PLA), all approved through a certification program. The company’s global issuing partners will be supported through the transition away from virgin PVC. More details on Mastercard’s strategy The Sustainable Card Program was launched in 2018, and currently over 330 issuers across 80 countries have signed up voluntarily for it.

Since the release, Mastercard has been working on developing and accelerating the overall process of the program, by partnering with major card manufacturers to transition millions of cards across its network, including 31 million in the Asia Pacific region alone, in order for them to be recycled. The initiative will check all newly made cards certified by Mastercard in order to assess their composition and sustainability claims. This certification is needed for them to be validated by a third-party auditor.

Once the cards have been validated, it will be possible for them to be imprinted with a Card Eco Certification mark. Furthermore, Mastercard also focuses on financial inclusion, data responsibility, and the overall climate and environmental issues that are currently present in the world. Its Princess Planet Coalition is currently working towards restoring 100 million trees globally by the end of 2025.

The company also works with Doconomy to develop the Mastercard Carbon Calculator, an easily integrated API that offers customers the possibility to understand the estimated carbon footprint of their purchases while using their banking application. As part of the zero strategy at HSBC, the company introduced recycled plastic payment cards across 28 of its global markets, according to the press release. Moreover, it embedded the requirement to use sustainable materials for all the credit, debit, and commercial cards in the product governance.

Mastercard’s partnerships and products launched US-based global technology company Mastercard uses secure data and networks to offer customers, financial institutions, businesses, and governments the needed services for their development. The firm had multiple collaborations and product launches recently, covering multiple geographies. At the beginning of May 2023, Mastercard joined forces with several Web3 partners in order to launch crypto credentials in a bid to improve the reliability of crypto transactions.

The Mastercard Crypto Credential product was created to help developers, individuals, and companies realise the full potential of powering payments, commerce, and economic value across borders and on-chain. In April 2023, the company launched a suite of services dedicated to female business owners across the Caribbean and Latin America. The solutions were created based on a survey that the firm conducted with Kantar in five markets from the region (including Colombia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Ecuador).

The company aimed to focus on the needs, preferences, and demands of female entrepreneurs. Earlier in the month, Mastercard launched Cross-Border Services Express in partnership with Fable FinTech and Payall Payment Systems, aiming to help FIs set up international payments for their customers. .