Mastercard‘s Head of Digital Assets and Blockchain APAC, Ashok Venkateswaran, has announced that the company will use NFTs as part of a project to offset carbon emissions.
He did so yesterday while speaking at Australian Blockchain Week, during which he discussed how Mastercard is working on monitoring the carbon footprint of its partners.
In fact, this project requires the product tracking technology used to be blockchain-based, so it is also suitable for the use of NFTs.
Venkateswaran stated:
“We’re developing partnerships with potential companies which are producing this carbon neutrality, carbon credit so to speak, and as we build up this relationship, we can acquire these carbon credits from these farms, and finally adding that into our provenance solution, we’re able to track it”.
Mastercard’s goal is to bring carbon footprint tracking to its blockchain-based solution as well, to help consumers offset carbon emissions through their purchases.
So with this initiative, the company wants to directly enable consumers making purchases to offset carbon emissions, and choose products that are better for the environment, by leveraging the features of its Provenance Solution.
Mastercard’s NFTs
Mastercard claims that its system provides very granular details so that consumers can choose the most environmentally friendly products by interacting with their directly related carbon credits, represented by an NFT.
Provenance Solution is built on Mastercard’s proprietary blockchain, and is designed primarily to help brands track their supply chain, and to show the provenance and production path of products to end consumers.
Venkateswaran went on to explain that their solution allows them not only to track the carbon footprint of the production process, but also to break it down to the individual product level, thus providing the end consumer with proof of the carbon emissions they have offset.
In this way, every time a consumer buys a product they are actually using or putting back into the system a certain number of credits, marked with specific NFTs, so that ultimately there is a direct impact on the environment.
