Even amidst a slowdown in environmental sustainability initiatives in some places, leading acquirers are powering ahead to address climate change. Facing increasing costs, regulatory pressure and customer demand for eco-friendly practices, banks are using acquiring as a channel to reduce costs, decrease carbon emissions and deepen merchant relationships.  

Sustainability Is Still Strong 

Around the world, the vast range of sustainability options for merchant acquirers includes paperless receipts, more efficient terminals, options for carbon offsets and eco-friendly insights that merchants can give to their customers. An NIQ (formerly Nielsen) survey found that 81 per cent of consumers in Asia Pacific feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment, so acquirers can serve customers’ needs and grow their business when they work on environmental sustainability.  

Accepting payments digitally rather than via cash is the most effective way to reduce the carbon impact of payment transactions, Worldline noted in its Accelerating the Decarbonisation of Payments study. Whereas in-store digital payments generate 2.4 grams of carbon per transaction, cash payments generate 36.8 grams. Along with the transaction itself, emissions factors for cash include transporting it, handling of cash by merchants and the production of currency. Enabling merchants to offer smartphone transactions is even more environmentally friendly, since traditional processes for manufacturing terminals contribute to emissions.  

JP Morgan goes even further, seeing changes in acquiring as part of a strategy to reinvent payment processes. One example JP Morgan cites is a climate-focused fintech that offers a plug-in for a bank’s proprietary smartphone app or a merchant’s online checkout page to offer customers information about the carbon emissions of what they are purchasing. Merchants can then offer the customer a simple option to buy an offset.  

Terminals 

Selecting the right POS terminals offers another way to reduce carbon emissions and save a surprising amount of money. While manufacturing eco-friendly terminals that reduce emissions and save costs has been underway for more than a decade, further changes are making these terminals even better.  

Worldline, for instance, designs and offers eco-design payment terminals that have power management features, do not contain hazardous products and can be recycled.  

Posiflex has removed lead and soldering, and it uses fan-free low-wattage designs that can cut terminal energy consumption by 50 per cent, potentially saving more than $100 in electricity costs. Better materials and lower electricity usage also reduce emissions. 

Hintel’s eco-friendly POS system uses a high-end motherboard and software integration to deliver an energy-efficient product with “super low” power consumption. The design also reduces the need for system maintenance, which decreases operating costs. 

These terminals, and those from other manufacturers, allow acquirers to showcase their green credentials and benefit merchants by saving them money.  

Acquirers in Asia Keep Delivering Innovative Solutions 

Acquirers in Asia are leveraging opportunities like these to attract customers and grow their business. A key factor may be, as NIQ found, that 40 per cent of consumers in Singapore and 36 per cent in Hong Kong want retailers to be more transparent about their sustainability efforts. Additionally, 40 per cent of Gen Z consumers say they would spend more if they knew where and how the product was sourced. Companies in Asia are responding to these customer preferences. 

AsiaPay, for instance, launched its Green Asset Reward Program (GARP) at Hong Kong Green Week in October 2025. It says GARP turns corporate expenses into tokenised green rewards to deliver climate impact and embed sustainability into financial systems. Merchants can certify purchases, tokenise Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) with blockchain technology, manage the VCUs and apply for carbon offsetting certificates based on their VCUs. 

In Singapore, DBS Bank’s merchant acquiring system offers digital receipts, sending digital receipts to customers instead of paper ones and streamlining operations. When a customer pays with a DBS-enabled method, the e-receipt can be generated digitally. Merchants and their customers can access the digital receipts through the mobile app or online banking portal. Merchants can reduce their environmental footprint – and costs – by not printing paper receipts.  

Adyen said many merchants are also making it easier for their customers to make a difference by facilitating donations at checkout. Prompting customers to donate when they are checking out is powerful, because they can donate easily after they have already entered their payment details.  

In Australia, Sphere enables merchant acquirers and merchants to collaborate to bridge the gap between customers’ spending habits and their environmental impact with CO₂ offsets. Moreover, it enables merchants to understand and reduce their own carbon footprint. Sphere CEO Shaun Lordan told CFOtech that Sphere assists merchants and payment systems with their climate-related ESG reporting by tracking their carbon emissions through high-quality data. The insights enable them to reduce emissions and invest in quality offset projects. It also allows merchants to offer consumers informed purchasing decisions and carbon footprint monitoring at checkout. 

More Impact Than Expected 

Leading practices clearly allow acquirers to reduce carbon emissions, provide better terminals, sell carbon data or offsets, and enable merchants to gain more customers. Even though it might seem that merchant acquiring and merchant payment processing would not have a big impact, the scale of the industry – nearly 800 billion transactions per year, according to NIQ – makes the impact larger than many expect. Merchants that embrace change can save money by reducing paper usage, spend less on terminal maintenance and reduce electricity usage by up to 50 per cent. Moreover, they may well generate more business from consumers who prioritise eco-friendly activities.  

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Author: Richard Hartung, Associate, Singapore, Payments Consulting Network 

An experienced professional with over 20 years of expertise in the payments and consumer financial services industry, specifically in the Asia Pacific region. He has held various key roles in organizations such as Citibank, Mastercard, and OCBC Bank, and has established consultancy firm Transcarta to assist financial services companies with strategy, operations improvement, and market research. 

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