API functionality for companies in the finance sector
Who is it for?
You handle monetary transactions and have a digital customer interface, or deliver IT systems to the finance sector. Use cases range from banking mobile apps to shopping websites, price comparison websites or apps for saving and budgeting. See for example "Mitt klimaspor" from SpareBank 1.
You handle some relevant data in your systems, be it transactions of a given currency and category or household information.
You can sell more of your climate friendly products and services while helping customers reduce their climate footprints, fulfilling GHG reporting requirements as you go.
Intro to functionality
Conversion of financial transactions to footprint
Calculate the footprint of a category of financial transactions. Read more on convert finance.
Calculation of financial footprints
Calculate a comprehensive and accurate footprint for a person from personal information and financial transactions. This can show actual change in footprints over time and savings from a sustainable choices. Read more on calculate finance.
Comparison of footprints
Compare a user's footprint to a relevant average person. This can be used to set goals or effectively nudge users' behavior in context, for example in a bank app. Read more on comparison of footprints.
Change financial behavior
Provide a user with personalised tips for environmentally friendly behavior, showing possible savings, calculated from simple questions. This could be used to promote the company's sustainable products and services. Read more on our support pages.
Translate footprints to everyday examples
Help explain and contextualize climate footprint through everyday examples. Read more on our support pages.
Frequently asked questions for the financial sector
How are footprints calculated from expenditures?
A user's footprint is calculated by multiplying how much money has been spent in a consumption category, such as "food", "clothing", etc., with an emission factor.
How are transactions categorized into different spending categories?
Ducky follows the recognized COICOP standard for categorizing personal purchases into consumption categories. Actors in the financial sector also have access to so-called MCC codes per transaction (for example, supplied by banks through PSD2 APIs), but these codes consider the point of sale and not which products and services were purchased. Many actors have therefore developed proprietary categories and machine learning algorithms to distinguish between these. Such proprietary categories must be mapped against the COICOP standard to be used for Ducky's API.
Why do loans and other financial services not appear in the footprint for bank customers?
The footprint for bank customers stems from the consumption of goods and services. The calculation is made by carrying out environmentally extended cross-flow analyzes of the entire country's economy, which are linked to individuals through the data in statistical consumption surveys. Unfortunately, statistical consumption surveys don't consider how we borrow and invest, so the total emissions cannot be linked to individuals with the method used. We are working on developing footprint calculations that take into account large investments, as these are also important in the larger context.
How accurate is the footprint for bank customers?
Footprints based on consumption are considered a very accurate way of quantifying your climate impact. Still, there are some sources of error in the calculation:
- The footprint for financial transactions is based on the categories that are used, which vary in both granularity and accuracy. Some purchases will always end up in the wrong category.
- If you buy something on behalf of others, such as food for the whole household, this will count towards your footprint. These expenses should have been distributed on those who eat the food.
- If you buy a business trip as a private expense, emissions should have been registered on the company's footprint and not your own.
- The footprint for bank customers is calculated from the transactions the bank has access to. If you have cards and accounts in another bank, these will not be included.
- The emission multipliers are based on average for the national economy - we don't know exactly what you have in your shopping basket, we only know what is released from an average amount spent on a type of good or service.
The service will become more accurate over time, as there will be opportunities to contribute with information that improves the calculation.