Dateline: London, 16th October 2024.The European Automated Clearing House Association (EACHA) published a comparative analysis of the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) impact of different payment instruments. Their report includes Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to assess the overall environmental impact of the production, processing and end-of-life phases for both electronic and non-electronic payment types. So how green is your wallet right now?ShareListen To The MoneyWhen it comes to what is the most environmentally-unfriendly way to pay I imagine that you have already your suspicions – but we’ll come back to that later. As for what is the most environmentally friendly way to pay, I won’t keep you in suspense: the results are as follows (from the most to the least environmentally friendly).In first place we have Credit Transfers transfers and debit transfers in batch mode. Credit transfers are better for the environment than debit transfers. In fact credit transfers are better than debit transfers all round which is why we should all be building “single credit message” (SCM) infrastructures and placing request-to-pay (R2P) and variable recurring payment (VRP) “layers 2s” on top of them for the use of businesses and customers. This approach delivers not only the most environmentally friendly payment mechanism but also the overall lowest cost platform for the wider economy.Instant Payments (ie, single immediate credit transfers). Obviously single transactions have more of an impact than when collected together in a batch. The difference may not be great, but it is not zero.Cards come in third place. They…How Green Is Your Wallet?