EP #302 - Roman Odermatt: Paying Green

About Roman Odermatt:

Roman Odermatt is the co-founder and CEO at PayGreen, a startup developing an ecological payment method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Roman holds an MSc in Entrepreneurship from the University of Bern and previously helped build the pharma startup InnoMedica Holding. He created PayGreen in 2019.

PayGreen is a payment method which calculates transaction fees for online shops based on the shop’s carbon footprint, which they assess themselves. Fees start at 2.5% (compared to 2.75% AMEX and 3% Paypal) and get higher or lower depending on the company’s progress. Customers incur no additional costs, and PayGreen serves as a sort of green checkmark for those looking to buy sustainably. This means the more popular PayGreen becomes, the more the reputation of the shops who don’t have the label will suffer, thereby creating an incentive for shops to commit to reducing their carbon footprint. PayGreen also has no incentive to help companies greenwash, since the less green these companies (actually) are, the more PayGreen earns.

The Paris Agreement has predicted that the sustainability market will grow to USD 12t by 2030, which means it’ll become one of the biggest sectors worldwide. Research also shows that nowadays ⅓ of customers simply refuse to buy products which aren’t sustainable, so the future is looking bright for PayGreen. In the next few years, they’re looking to expand beyond carbon footprint emissions by running survey-based supplier checks.

PayGreen digitized their shares with daura and are currently raising money through the platform.

Memorable Quotes:

"The Paris Agreement predicted that the sustainability market will grow to USD 12t by 2030. That means it’ll become one of the biggest sectors worldwide."

If you would like to listen to more episodes on cleantech, check out our conversations with Mark Essam and Mikhail Kokorich.

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