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Ant Financial Harnesses Blockchain Technology to Finance Solutions for Global Sustainability Challenges

Alipay parent company Ant Financial Services Group has released its first-ever Corporate Social Responsibility Report and committed to leveraging the company’s technology, partners and employees to tackle issues such as climate change, inequality and poverty. The report includes the company’s progress update on Ant Forest, the in-app carbon tracking and tree planting initiative in Alipay, and Ant Love, its philanthropic platform.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 7 years ago | About a 2 minute read

Alipay parent company Ant Financial Services Group has released its first-ever Corporate Social Responsibility Report and committed to leveraging the company’s technology, partners and employees to tackle issues such as climate change, inequality and poverty.

The report includes the company’s progress update on Ant Forest, the in-app carbon tracking and tree planting initiative in Alipay, and Ant Love, its philanthropic platform.

“As a tech company, what we want to do and are currently doing is to use technology to bring society back to the origin of human beings: simple, equal and free,” said Eric Jing, CEO of Ant Financial.

Launched in August 2016, the Ant Forest platform has already attracted over 220 million users, resulting in the planting of 1.11 million trees as of January 2017 and reduction of 670,000 tons of carbon emissions. The company plans to plant more than seven million new trees will be planted this year.

For its Ant Love philanthropy platform, Ant Financial has begun to harness blockchain technology to make charity donations more transparent through donation tracking. The platform also shares its technical capabilities with nonprofit organizations. As of March 2017, the amount of fundraising facilitated by Ant Love exceeds 967 million RMB and the platform has provided services to over 1,200 charity organizations.

As part of the Ant Love platform, Alipay, a third-party online and mobile payment platform, also launched an in-app donation registration function in December 2016. The app is geared towards simplifying the organ donation process in China and has already enabled 450 million real-name users to register to donate organs. The tool was designed to help speed up the process of connecting donors with those who are in need of an organ and increasing the likelihood that they will find a donor.

Ant Financial is also joining up with external partners including the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to work towards a sustainable future. Earlier this year founded the Green Digital Finance Alliance at the World Economic Forum in Davos with the goal of using digital technologies to drive financing that addresses global environmental challenges. Three months later, the company initiated the Cashless Alliance together with UNEP, government agencies, NGOs and business partners to promote low-carbon operations, reduce resource waste and enhance business efficiency.