TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees | Hacker News Reader

TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

treecard.org

88 pointsivanmaeder101 comments

Ecosia, the company backing TreeCard, has a search engine that plants trees. Ecosia has claimed to have planted 116M trees. Several environmentalists have come out in support of the product — and specifically in support of the way Ecosia uses partners to plant trees on Ecosia’s behalf and the way Ecosia keeps their partners accountable.

I personally will have a hard time saying good-bye to my credit card rewards. However I think the wooden card might have a viral aspect because people will want to comment on how unique the design is. This looks like another great product by Ecosia, and I hope that they continue to make competitive products that plant trees.

It’s also worth noting that while planting trees is very good for the environment, it is not a silver bullet against climate change.

Previous hacker news discussion about Ecosia. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19324766

> It’s also worth noting that while planting trees is very good for the environment, it is not a silver bullet against climate change.

Not buying things is better for the environment. Projects like this are brimming with good intention but are little better than salve for consumer guilt.

Yeah but objecting to every attempt to do good because, it doesn't go far enough! Is a recipe for doing nothing.

A card that leaks crude oil on every purchase would be more effective (if ridiculous from an engineering/logistical perspective) -- salves for consumer guilt aren't merely not doing enough, they're enabling the behavior that's doing the most harm.

"Enabling the behaviour that's doing the most harm" - I'm somewhat skeptical of environmental viewpoints that hinge on individual consumer guilt. As one random reference point, a single cruise-operating corporation was responsible for as much sulphur-based air pollution as all the cars in Europe in 2018/19 [0]. This is not so much to say that the card in question is a good idea, but more to point out that if you can salve some guilt and get people to vote green, you likely end up in a better position than if you maximise guilt.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/8bceef94-86cd-11e9-a028-86cea8523...

This credit card doesn't enable anything that wasn't already enabled. That argument is similar to 'what-about-ism' where irrelevant objections about another subject are injected as if they follow from the premise.

I can imagine a variant of this card that tries to tackle the point you bring up. Not all purchases are equal. Some of them have negative carbon footprints. The tree planting offsets the footprint for every purchase. These things are not easy to estimate exactly but since there are probably order of magnitude differences in carbon footprints for different products there should be useful information about the relative impact of a purchase to display to the consumer and to demonstrate the overall impact of the project.

This feels very clever to me. I think people have very wrong senses of how bad various actions are for carbon footprint. I know folks who don’t eat meat for CO2 reasons (which I’m fine with) but fly across the US all the time—-sorry citation needed and happy to be corrected but I did this math once and it was roughly one year of meat = one (round?)trip.

A side-benefit, in my view, is to show that actually offsetting carbon footprints isn’t terribly expensive (for people who have the disposable income to fly across the country), which I think counters the “We’d have to shut down the economy to stop global warming” misconception that I believe a lot of people have (citation also needed here, just personal experience)

The Indulgences That Actually Work Card (in the sense of old Catholic indulgences), you could call it :)

How exactly would a card that leaks crude oil be more effective? Leaking crude oil is terrible for the environment. Planting trees is good for it.

It's a thought experiment, analogous to Tullock's Spike [1]. The idea is to modify incentives, by putting environmental impact at the forefront of a consumer's mind, by making them actually handle the mess that the card produces (thereby making them reluctant to make purchases).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock%27s_spike

Why would that modify anyone's behavior? Consumption already has negative environmental externalities, and it doesn't seem to be causing much modification.

Crude oil is nasty, smelly stuff. You wouldn't wanna pull that out for anything but the absolute necessities, because it's gross and you'd need to clean up the gross thing.

maybe take a closer look at the thread; they're saying that purchasing "stuff" is the worst thing for the environment, so a card that leaks oil on purchases would discourage the act of doing so, and hence do more good tha encouraging purchases to plant trees.

I read the thread. I get the idea, and it's nonsense. At scale, nobody cares about negative environmental externalities. If you added an extra one, behavior would not change in any scalable way. And it certainly wouldn't change in greater proportion to the damage it causes.

Is planting more trees actually good for the environment?

You plant a tree and it grows taking co2 from the air after a 100 years of so it dies it rots and releases all the c02 it captured.

What we need to do is massively reduce the amount of gress house gasses we release and then work on taking out of the air in a way that won't put it back in again.

Do you need to be such a judgmental scold? People need to pay rent. People need to buy food. People need to pay for all kinds of things that don't really constitute the kind of acquisitive consumerism that you're trying to criticize.

> Do you need to be such a judgmental scold?

Is the personal attack called for here?

What are we supposed to do? Live in trees? Build everything ourselves from raw resources we mined with our own hands?

If you want any kind of advancement in civilization you need commerce.

Processing a transaction might be a carbon negative interaction with this company. That is a noteworthy innovation.

Very well said! It appears like the other commenters deliberately try to misinterpret you. Consuming less is indeed one of the best things we can do.

Instead of buying new cheap clothes all the time to be trendy we should buy quality clothing and wear it for a long time. Repair it (and other things we buy) or sell it or give it away rather than dispose of.

Here in Europe things are moving in the right direction, but still too slowly, I am afraid.

I think people get tired of everyone bashing every initiative that doesn’t solve every problem that exists. If someone can plant trees with their grocery purchases instead of gaining points to purchase flights I think it’s a net win.

>World's first wooden debit card.

I have my doubts considering Säästöpankki has offered debit cards made out of birch years ago.

https://paperijapuu.fi/viilua-vinguttamaan/

https://twitter.com/HaveMik/status/913800152644759553

Is it just me who dislike being incentivized like this to do something? By having someone do a totally unrelated donation to charity when I do something?

I much rather do X because X itself is good than because X will have someone do Y and have me consider X to be good because Y is good.

It is essentially green washing, no matter how well intended it is or how good X in itself is. Doing some totally unrelated donation is essentially PR, where one instead could lower prices and have me myself donate that money.

(Also, credit card charges are insane and almost amount to stealing a percentage of all sales from businesses. Debit cards are better in that they, at least in Sweden, have a fixed low rate that doesn't change if someone buys for a lot or a little)

The problem is that far fewer people will donate without something like this. If you want to use a traditional cash back credit card and donate the rewards directly to something, the existence of this card does not stop you from doing that. Some people find it easier to donate in this way, and I don't see what's wrong with that.

How it works:

> No. Zero fees. TreeCard will be 100% free to use.

> Every time you use your TreeCard, Mastercard processes the transaction and charges merchants (online and physical stores) a small fee. This is a standard fee paid by all merchants to1 accept card payments. We'll use that fee to plant trees.

I'm confused though. Surely this fee Mastercard charges goes to Mastercard, not the card company?

https://www.treecard.org/how-it-works

The keyword is "interchange".

(disclosure: I work for Stripe but this is my own recollection of how this all works and could be wrong in the details)

There are multiple parties at play in a card network transaction:

0. The card holder

1. The card brand (TreeCard)

2. The issuing bank (unknown right now, but this is usually a bank like HSBC, Citi, Wells Fargo, etc)

3. The card network itself (MasterCard)

4. The merchant

5. The merchant's acquirer (Square, for example)

6. The merchant's acquiring bank (whoever Square uses as their baking provider)

Each entity other than the card holder and the merchant charge fees. The card holder _sometimes_ is charged a fee, but in this case TreeCard does not. The merchant is always charged a fee (which they can pass onto the customer in certain countries/circumstances).

The per-transaction fee the merchant pays is split between the card network and the issuing bank. The issuing bank then generally will share a portion of this revenue with the card brand.

Merchants are also charged by their acquiring bank, either on a per-transaction basis or a flat monthly fee.

If you want to know why the Collison brothers are so rich, it’s because they were the only deeply technical guys who also had the ability, interest, and energy to deal with all this.

Looking at this chain of middlemen between the buyer and seller, it's a bit nauseating. No wonder products cost so much.

It all adds up to just a couple of percent. That's a lot in aggregate, but for most people the convenience is worth it. Remember having to go to the bank every payday and getting enough cash for the week? Or carrying a checkbook everywhere? If you're under 40, you probably don't.

How do you think card companies make money at the moment?

In exactly the same way - you buy something, the merchant is charged a fee, the payment provider takes a cut, the card company gets a cut. Sometimes they pass some of this cut on to the customer as well (the cashbacks and rewards.)

It's the wording that confuses me. It would make sense if the card company were responsible for paying a fee to Mastercard on each purpose. That way they could increase that fee and take the difference.

But the way this is worded (and I suppose it must be how it works) it means that Mastercard charges a fee and you have an agreement to take some of that fee from Mastercard on each transaction. Just seems a little backwards.

> But the way this is worded (and I suppose it must be how it works) it means that Mastercard charges a fee and you have an agreement to take some of that fee from Mastercard on each transaction. Just seems a little backwards.

I don't really see why that's backwards? The mechant pays for a service (accepting card payments) from Mastercard. Mastercard take some of that fee and give it to the card provider so they can cover the costs of running your card, such as their website and phone lines, or in this case planting trees as well. Where's the backwards bit?

Well just historically speaking the easiest way to be a middleman is to charge a fee on top of what you're middleman-ing. And this doesn't work like that.

But who am I to say what's backwards? :D

Don’t try applying logic to Mastercard fees.

The PDF the lists out all the fees and how they’re calculated is hundreds of pages long. Even the banks who pay some of these fee don’t understand them all.

The bulk of the fee the merchant pays is actually interchange. It goes to the issuing institution (your bank, challenger bank or fintech). The rest goes to the processor (Stripe, Adyen, etc.. and the scheme such as Visa or Mastercard).

It probably works similar to an affiliate program but for credit/debit cards. I'd imagine that Mastercard benefits from Treecard encouraging their members/customers to make purchases using Mastercard's network.

I like the concept, but so many questions -- Who is behind this? As in, what bank? If it is a debit card, I have an account somewhere holding my money. Is it insured? Is this just a branded card from an existing bank, or is this a new organization? Is this even real, or just another "build a landing page to see if there is interest"?

"How it works" needs to answer the financial side of this product, not just what percentage of profit goes to trees.

Tree Card probably have an e-money licence. They’ll have a backing bank that actually holds the money, and probably another company that manages the card.

They’ll be required to keep that money in a custodial account with their backing bank, so Tree Card will have no ability to operate a fractional reserve, or use their clients money for operating purposes. Their banking bank is probably required to make sure they’re following the rules.

If Tree Card go bust, then your money will be safe (Tree Card can’t really touch it), it it’ll probably take some time to recover it from their backing bank.

If the backing bank goes bust, then I’m not sure what happens. But I think the custodial status of the account should offer some protections. But again it’ll take a while to get your money back.

Oh, and finally, there e-money license probably makes it very difficult to explain this. If they said something like “your money is as well protected as in an FSCS (U.K. government bank account protection) protected account” they would probably get told off by the regulator, because the protection isn’t the same.

> Is this even real, or just another "build a landing page to see if there is interest"?

My guess is somewhere in the middle, but leaning closer to the latter.

The reason the backing bank isn’t disclosed is likely it’s not fully regulatory approved yet based on some wording they used. Simple did a similar thing if memory serves when they launched.

We’re fast moving away from physical cards being necessary. With the ubiquity of Apple / Google Pay, the TreeCard feels like a gimmick more than a solution.

Maybe. I personally don't use those payment systems; I don't have any desire for Apple or Google to have that kind of direct individual insight into my spending.

This is associated with Ecosia.

It actually gives me more confidence in the product. I used to be on the fence regarding Ecosia (probably just the usual Internet cynicism), but I came around to thinking they are a force for good.

Love the design but debit cards always feel a bit dicey to use.

Yeah looks great but a combined credit or debit card would be better.

Why dicey?

They don't have the same legal protections for their use. There's hardly ever any reason to use a debit card over a credit card.

This is location dependent though. A easy way to see if someone is from the US, is if they advice you to prefer credit cards rather than debit cards.

Meanwhile in Europe, there is no reason to have a credit card instead of debit. On the contrary, it's more risky to have a credit card rather than debit as on debit cards the limit for overdraft is usually way lower than how much someone could spend with your credit card.

I'm 30+ and never owned a credit card, nor had any reason to get one.

> in Europe, there is no reason to have a credit card instead of debit

There concrete reasons to use one in Europe (at least where I live):

It's a month's free loan - why spend your own money when you can keep it invested or otherwise working for you for a month first for free?

Consumer credit law is still stronger for paying on credit than on debit.

I used to fly transatlantic first class once a year for free based on just my credit card rewards. I'm not some unusually high earner either. What possible reason is there to turn that down?

Yeah, where I live you have exactly the same protections using credit card vs debit cards. Credit cards here don't usually have good rewards either. If you spend 10000 euros you might get 10 back in the end of the year, hardly something to hurrah for. Sometimes they give you a free TV if you open up a bank account with the bank and change to the bank to receive your monthly salary, but that's about it. So don't really have any reasons to use a credit card instead of a debit, as I only spend money I have anyways.

If I remember correctly, banks here also always give you a debit card when you sign up with them, while credit cards have to be applied for separately and also usually has a yearly fee, compared to debit cards that are free.

What do you think about the argument about it allowing you to keep your money invested for longer?

Say you're ordering something large like a car. You can pay the deposit on a debit card, and lose access to the money immediately, or you can pay on a credit card, and keep your money invested for another month or so, still earning you money, until you need to settle.

A credit card gives a consumer liquidity. I don't think it's an unusual economic concept to say that liquidity is useful and helps you use your money more efficiently.

What kind of income are you looking at for an extra month, even with a huge payment like a car (which I don't think people use credit OR debit cards for in Europe)?

I suspect for the vast majority of people it's going to be negligible at best.

In the UK, the biggest advantage of using a credit card for the first £100 of any purchase is that it makes the credit card provider jointly liable with the vendor for any failure in the contract. This is an awesome bit of consumer protection.

I've never tried buying a car with a credit card (though my credit limits are, insanely, high enough that I could).

I would guess it might be seen as a cash advance and charged interest immediately, also not accrue into the loyalty rewards. But I don't really know.

Atleast in my experience (NL, DE), a very small minority of institutions allow credit card payments. For example, online orders and food delivery. No car dealership or landlord will accept credit card, only direct debit or bank transfer.

> Meanwhile in Europe, there is no reason to have a credit card instead of debit.

Much easier to get your money back, e.g. in common 2020 situation of cancelled flights.

Again, not everywhere. Credit cards and debit cards are treated the same way here. Same process to request money back for both, and I have the same protections with both.

> This is location dependent though

Definitely true.

> Meanwhile in Europe, there is no reason to have a credit card instead of debit

Ehh, I'm not sure I'd agree 100% with this one. You can certainly get by with just a debit card (and enjoy the access to e.g. the chargeback scheme) but I find credit cards a useful tool to build credit (and my credit history built up by never missing a CC payment undoubtedly helped me out when I applied for a mortgage).

There's also the benefit of rewards which, although are smaller than in the states (because the interchange fees are better regulated), you may as well take advantage of.

I'd add a footnote to this to say: I use my CCs purely as charge cards and have a direct debit set up to this effect.

Yeah, credit history is something I never really cared about as I don't have any interest in getting a loan or touch anything else related to credit histories, so I'm probably a bit biased in that. I also guess the cost of living is so low where I live so I (together with many others) don't need to be able to take loans, not even to be able to afford a house.

Edit: not a complaint, just found it funny that someone thought of to downvote me a minute after I wrote my comment, because me and others around me don't need credit to afford a house? HN sometimes is funny.

Credit history is equally location dependent as the use of credit cards. It's simply not a thing over here. Whether you'll be granted a mortgage (usually) simply depends on whether or not you have a steady source of income that's sufficient to cover the risk. Whether or not you missed a CC payment when you were on an extended trip really doesn't factor into it. I think I prefer it this way.

> Yeah, credit history is something I never really cared about as I don't have any interest in getting a loan or touch anything else related to credit histories, so I'm probably a bit biased in that.

Fair enough! I wish that were the case in my part of the UK ;)

Building credit is not a thing in most european countries.

How do they handle assessing creditworthiness, then? Ex. someone walks into a bank and asks for a loan to buy a house. How does the bank evaluate that?

A) Do you have a job?

B) How long you've had the job?

C) How much is your salary?

D) You have family?

And so on. Bunch of questions and documents back and forth until the bank is confident you'll pay back.

It's funny to hear people from North America talking about the scary new Chinese "Social Points" system when they've had credit score for such a long time they don't even think about it anymore and find alternatives strange and hard to imagine.

The credit score in the US is based entirely upon one's assets, income, current amount of debts, and payment history. It doesn't include what one posts on social media or what political party one votes for. At least not yet.

The US credit score has nothing to do with income. In Europe if you have good income you can get a credit. As an immigrant to the US with no US credit history that is near impossible. In the US you start with the worst possible credit score and need to take on debt to prove that you are worthy to take on debt, which is crazy. As a counter example in Germany you are basically born with the perfect credit score, and you can only make it worse (e.g. by not paying back a loan).

As another person responded - based on your income and situation ( family, age, stability of the job) and very basic loan history ( stored at the central bank, basically for the lender to know if you have outstanding debts and if you've defaulted on loans before)

In the EU, there are lower charges for the merchant when a debit card is used. Sometimes, this results in a small charge for using a credit card.

(Note that TreeCard is an English company, where they have inherited this cost difference.)

> In the EU, there are lower charges for the merchant when a debit card is used.

This is definitely the case in the US. The fees vary between different acquiring banks, merchant gateways and cards, but generally they follow a pattern similar to the following:

CC - $0.25 + 1-4% of the transaction amount

Debit - $0.25 - 0.50 and no percentage

> Sometimes, this results in a small charge for using a credit card.

That's not the way it's been for years - it became illegal in the UK to do this a while ago.

> That's not the way it's been for years

If it’s a Visa or MC backed card, it’s always been against their merchant policies to surcharge a CC and merchants can lose their ability to process cards if they do. It definitely hasn’t stopped merchants from doing it though (in the US mainly, but have seen it elsewhere too).

Better secured and you're using the money you have vs. taking a loan?

I ditched my CCs as soon as debit cards could be reliably used for on-line purchases. And AFAIK, the no.1 personal finance advice is "stop using CCs".

I'm in Europe, though. That may be an European thing.

The no.1 personal finance advice is pay your credit card balance in full every month.

The exception is when you have a credit card offering a 0% interest promotional period. As long as your overall credit utilization is low, you can pay the minimum each month to maximize the amount of time your money sits collecting interest. I usually pick up a new 0% promo card every year to get cheap financing for large purchases while my money appreciates in the stock market.

The amount of interest a savings account is going to accrue in that time is negligible to the point of being worthless.

Nope. Invest the money into an S&P 500 ETF and you’ll probably gain 10% profit by the time you have put down your last payment.

The S&P return is not always and certainly not guaranteed to be 10% or even positve. Some months/years it is negative. It's an exceedingly bad idea to keep cash that you will need in the short term (< 5 years) invested in equities.

If you sell OTM covered calls of about 10 or 8 delta against the shares you own and keep rolling them after sufficient theta decay you can conservatively add 1% ROI each month on top of whatever appreciation your shares get. So yea you have a good chance of getting 10% ROI per year consistently this way unless S&P is down more than 2% for the year.

Unfortunately so many people use this strategy these days that the bids are lower than what they used to be though.

In the UK, at least, if a transaction paid with a credit card is between £100 - £30k and the merchant becomes unable / unwilling to render the goods / services, you get the full amount back under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. This is to prevent people from being in debt for things they never receive. You don't get that protection with a debit card.

I'm sure other countries have similar protection.

AFAIK in the US, the merchant is not allowed to charge the card until the good/service has been delivered (or shipped). I'm sure some do anyway...

> you're using the money you have vs. taking a loan?

Why would you want to use the money you have when you can take a free loan until the end of the month? A free loan means you can keep your own money invested or otherwise working more efficiently for you somehow.

> the no.1 personal finance advice is "stop using CCs"

I've never seen this - I see 'use CC's more to build up your credit'. I use my cards religiously and have near perfect credit based on I think basically on this alone as it's the only credit I use beside my mortgage.

The problem is that most people lack discipline and run up debt. Using CCs is fine if you are extremely disciplined.

Dave Ramsey made a career out of teaching “normal” undisciplined people how to avoid and eliminate debt and that includes the advice of “never ever use credit cards or get loans.” A 15 year home mortgage with 20% or more down is the only acceptable debt in his eyes. (And that’s because human nature often leads people into debt, not because of any mathematical basis.) For the majority of “normal” people, he’s right.

We don't spend nearly enough time in primary and high school teaching practical personal finance. For many people that could be the single most important life skill they learn in 12 years of education.

You keep trying to make this "keep your money invested for a month" argument but without actual numbers I don't believe it. How much are you spending in a month that you actually get any kind of investment return on it? And what is your return?

> Why would you want to use the money you have when you can take a free loan until the end of the month?

Because it's usually not free. Most banks charge some fee for providing a credit card. Debit cards are completely free with most banks.

You should really shop around! In Europe I have a free credit card, with a large line of credit, that I literally never pay any interest on, that (used to) fly me to New York in first class once a year on normal household and business expense spending. They're out there - you're throwing away money by not using them.

In the US it's easy to get a zero-fee credit card. Most have rewards programs.

The personal finance advice I've heard is not "don't use credit cards" it is "don't carry a balance on credit cards."

Carrying a balance will eat you alive on interest. As will fees for late payments or going over the limit. If you have the self-discipline to not do those things, there's no reason to not use a credit card.

The thing is CCs basically give a zero interest rate loan for upto 45 days. This means if you spent 1000£ through CC rather than a debit card, the 1000£ will sit in your bank account and earn interest, also 1000£ spent on the CC would have earned you reward points that could be redeemed as a statement credit. Thus in effect by using CC, one would have spend less for the same transaction.

Also taking credit and closing them in time with CC could boost one's credit score, which may be useful in the future ocassion when one requires a bank loan.

Is that not sane personal finance advice?

> the 1000£ will sit in your bank account and earn interest

You typically use a non-savings account to back a credit card. 0% interest

Most savings accounts give in the area of 0.01% interest.

While you’re right in general that you’d wanna use credit and keep cash for many things, a typical CC transaction is too small for this to be worth considering.

Use a CC for the points and pay it off every month. Forget the interest gains.

Make sure you don’t not pay. The interest on a CC loan will kill you. And that’s far more common for most people.

I don't know your country, but in many countries banks allow savings account with reasonable interest rates to back a CC. Sometimes they provide automatic gathering up of parked funds in the savings account into a higher interest rate deposit account of even higher interest rate.

This depends upon the geographical location and indeed, the amount you're spending.

I'd definitely use my Amex for items over £100 (for Section 75 protection) but under that amount my understanding was that you're reliant on the (voluntary) chargeback scheme which I can use with my bank and debit card too.

So the only thing you really gain for the smaller purchases is the money not leaving your account with the CC, I think?

It's strange to me that legal protections vary per payment method where you're from. If you bought something defective, warranty should cover it. If your flight gets cancelled, there's probably some kind of consumer protection in place. If you were robbed or defrauded in some way, there's laws and protections against that as well. Some CCs come with insurance over here, but those are just that: insurance.

Not relevant since people use debit cards all day long.

In my experience, harder to dispute fraudulent charges.

“We also use suppliers such as social media companies and search engines in order to advertise the launch of our Services. We may share your email address or device ID with these suppliers.”

I will not get this card because their privacy policy does not align with my values.

I think I’d rather get 1.5% (or whatever I can get) back and donate that to my chosen program instead of paying these guys all that percentage to then turn around and donate less of it to their chosen program.

Yeah, with Fidelity and Citi offering 2% back, it's hard to see how this card would have a bigger impact. I think the main difference is conspicuous virtuosity — every time you get the card out to pay, it shows everyone around you what a 'good person' you are.

Do the trees that they plant actually grow into full-sized adult trees or are they planted but never cared for? That's a huge issue which apparently affects many of these tree-planting schemes.

BTW are mechanical imprinters which need the embossed numbers still supported by any banks? The last time I seen one was more than a decade ago. I actually love offline analog tech, it would seem cool to me if they are, but I doubt so.

I would have signed up for the trial, but I don't see why I have to add my email, name, DoB, and phone number. Why isn't email good enough?

I tried to sign up for their wait list but gave up after entering my real name, a fake date of birth, and a fake phone number, which means I couldn't get their verification code. I understand asking for demographic info to prioritize a wait list, but that's not what they're asking.

why do they need all this info for a wait list of a service they don't yet provide? this doesn't inspire confidence.

just curious if there is any similar project to save existing old trees? planting new trees is nice but losing existing "old" trees is killing our environement from urban to global scale...

I waited for this for long but never hear back.

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