TreeCard, which offers a wooden Mastercard debit card that directs profits from merchant surcharges towards reforestation initiatives, has successfully raised $23 million in funding. This round saw participation from prominent investors, including Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, World Fund, EQT, Seedcamp, Episode 1, and several angel investors.
In 2020, the eco-friendly search engine Ecosia acquired a 20% stake in TreeCard for £1 million. The startup subsequently raised an additional $5.1 million in February last year in preparation for its launch in the UK.
The wooden debit card is complemented by an app that allows users to track their spending, split bills with friends, and see how many trees have been planted as a direct result of their purchases. Operating on the Mastercard network and utilizing back-end processing services from Synapse, TreeCard functions as a complete debit account, permitting top-ups from users’ regular bank accounts. It supports chip and PIN, contactless transactions, and mobile payments.
TreeCard generates revenue from interchange fees and commits to investing 80% of its profits into sustainable initiatives, particularly reforestation in collaboration with Ecosia. Since its inception, the company claims to have planted 200,000 trees.
This latest funding will help TreeCard prepare for its entry into the US market, where it has amassed a waitlist of 250,000 potential customers.
CEO and co-founder Jamie Cox stated, “We’ve always believed that if there was a button that could make your life more sustainable, then people would press it. There is a desire, and an urgent need, to be more sustainable, but too often people don’t know where to start or aren’t sure about the right way to go about it.”