Climate impact FinTech startup Lune scores $4m

 Lune, which aims to help retailers and consumers understand the climate impact of their purchases, has collected $4m in its funding round.

Early-stage venture capital firm VC Crane served as the lead investor. The round was also backed by 15 angel investors, including N26 co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal, Voi co-founder Fredrik Hjelm and OysterHR co-founder Tony Jamous.

The majority of this funding will be used to expand the team, with it currently hiring staff across tech, product and commercial teams. Funds will also help build more products.

 Lune was co-founded by Erik Stadigh, formerly an investor at VC Crane, and Roberto Bruggemann, previously a principal engineer at Freetrade. They build the company to make every product and service climate positive by default.

It claims delivering climate impact initiatives are seen as a cost centre and huge undertaking. However, Lune aims to provide API and software tools to simplify the ability for businesses to integrate climate impact into their customer experience, starting with carbon emissions calculations and carbon removal.

Stadigh said, “The status quo today is to create a Sustainability Report, which will be buried somewhere on a company’s website – far away from the eyes of most customers. As such, the business never sees any commercial return in this area. Sustainability remains a cost centre and struggles to compete with revenue-generating initiatives.

“We founded Lune to make prioritising climate impact a no-brainer for growth-minded businesses. By integrating it into their customer experience, businesses increase customer acquisition, engagement, and loyalty – while having a measurably positive impact on the planet. And with Lune’s API and low/no code tools for emissions calculations and carbon removal, we aim to make it so easy that there’s no excuse not to do it.”

Research from Lune found that over 70% of European consumers want a green payment method that tackles climate change.

Lune partners with carbon project developers around the world to build a diverse list of high-impact and innovative projects. Through its API, any retailer can automatically calculate carbon emissions of a purchase and pay to neutralise it. This information can also be given to consumers.

The FinTech company is in its early commercialisation stages but has partnerships with TrueLayer and Yapily.

TrueLayer co-founder and CEO Francesco Simoneschi said, “It is essential that every business becomes more climate friendly. For TrueLayer, doing right for our planet is important, an ethos shared by both our customers and our employees. Lune was the easiest way for our business to take the first steps, have a real impact, and continue building the future of the payments industry.”

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