We allocate contributions towards projects that remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere, primarily by purchasing the permanent removal of CO₂ at a particular price per ton. Purchasing carbon removal from frontier technologies is our primary focus, but in some cases, we’ll back other entities that can advance the carbon removal ecosystem. We are open to supporting projects that have a path to—but currently don’t offer—a net-negative carbon removal solution. For example, we might fund academic research directly or components of future carbon removal systems, such as “capture-only” or “storage-only” projects (for example, CarbonCure). We select a variety of projects with the help of scientific expert reviewers and use a transparent application process. As is typically the case with a portfolio approach, some projects will deliver results and others might fail. We’re optimistic that the breadth of technologies and organizations we get behind will increase the likelihood that the world has the solutions needed to counteract climate change.
No. Traditional carbon offsets, while often inexpensive, are unlikely to scale to the size of the climate problem. Instead, we’ve chosen to focus on permanent carbon removal technologies. In the best case, we hope that these projects can grow to provide a material portion of the gigatons of carbon removal the world needs to limit a rise in temperature below agreed-upon targets. We select carbon removal projects based on criteria we developed in partnership with our scientific expert advisors, and we rely on our public application and review process instead of verifying through traditional carbon offset verifiers.
Stripe Climate Commitments sends you a quarterly update detailing your contribution, the projects it was allocated to, and the impact and progress of those projects so far. You can also monitor impact in the Dashboard.
No. You’ll find the most reliable calculation of your impact in the Dashboard. 100% of your funds go towards supporting early stage permanent carbon removal technologies. Importantly, the goal is to advance the most promising technologies and maximize the long-term impact rather than buy the most tons for the cheapest price today. Because we’re purchasing from early-stage technologies, it typically takes 2-5 years to deliver tons. In practice, the total number of tons successfully removed might actually be a little lower based on supplier failures (which are common in nascent fields). Given that, don’t make ton-specific claims. A better approach would be to highlight the percentage or dollar amount of your contribution toward scaling critical carbon removal technologies. If you’re looking to make carbon neutral or net zero claims, check out Climate Orders.
We calculate your contribution by multiplying the payment amount by the percentage. So for a 1% commitment, a 100 USD charge would result in a 1 USD contribution in addition to your standard Stripe fees. We debit your contributions from your balance using a separate balance transaction.
Contributions are generally debited from your account within a minute after a transaction is processed.
You can change or pause your commitment at any time in the Climate Commitment page of your Dashboard.
You might be able to deduct it as a business expense in the same manner as a typical Stripe fee. Your contribution isn’t currently processed through a nonprofit organization. Speak to a tax advisor about your specific situation.
No. Stripe doesn’t charge VAT or GST on contributions, so you won’t receive an official receipt for reimbursement.
Your contributions are reported as a “Contributions” line item in the Balance change from activity section of your financial reports in the Dashboard.
We don’t return contributions when payments are refunded. We do return contributions from lost disputes.
If you’ve set a percentage contribution, the percentage is assessed against all charges, in the settlement currency of each charge. If you’ve set a fixed monthly contribution, it’s debited from your balance in your default currency.
Currently, only Stripe businesses are able to contribute a fraction of their revenue to carbon removal. In the future, we might introduce functionality that would allow your customers to contribute as well.
Enabling Climate Commitments in your Dashboard will enable contributions from your platform itself, it won’t affect your connected accounts. If you take an application fee from your connected accounts, you’ll see this reflected in your percentage-based contributions. For destination charges, we’ll apply the percentage-based contribution to the charge minus the transferred amount. For separate charges and transfers, we’ll apply the percentage-based contribution to the entire charge amount.
Percentage-based contributions are calculated similarly for Connect and non-Connect users. However, in order to more accurately approximate revenue for Connect platforms, there are a few additional considerations:
If you use direct charges, since the charge doesn’t appear on your account, we’ll instead take a percentage of your application fees. So for a 1% commitment, a 100 USD charge with a 1 USD application fee would result in a 0.01 USD contribution.
If you use destination charges, we’ll subtract the amount transferred to the connected account before applying the percentage. So for a 1% commitment, a 100 USD charge with a 90 USD transfer would result in a 0.1 USD contribution.
If you use separate charges and transfers, we can’t reliably tie the transfers back to originating charges, so we take a percentage of the charge amount, just like with non-Connect payments. This isn’t always a good approximation of your platform revenue.
I use Standard connected accounts. How can they use Climate Commitments?Your Standard accounts can log into their Stripe Dashboard and independently enable Climate Commitments. Doing so won’t affect your platform. If you’d like to make your Standard connected accounts aware of Climate Commitments, you can share this link to the Climate section of their Dashboard with them: https://dashboard.stripe.com/get-started/climate.
If you have access to the Stripe Dashboard, you can enable Climate Commitments from your Dashboard. If your third-party partner uses Stripe Checkout, Invoices, or Receipts, you can automatically inform your customers about your contributions there. If not, you can download our badge asset kit to update your own site as you see fit! Both of these options are available from your Climate page after you finish enrolling.
You can freely use and reference language from the Stripe Climate page or our blog post discussing our initial carbon removal purchases. You can also point them to your Stripe-hosted custom webpage.
You can find assets and usage guidelines in the Climate page of your Dashboard.
You can allow new Standard account users to enable Climate contributions during onboarding with the Climate setting in the Dashboard. This contributes a portion of their revenue towards carbon removal.
Our testing has shown that including this step doesn’t harm conversion.
No. You only need to decide whether to include this step in onboarding, and Stripe takes care of the rest.
We direct 100% of the contribution to carbon removal, and with the help of our scientific advisors we select projects that maximize long-term impact. Contact us to learn more.
Climate Commitments is currently available to Stripe users with their own account or a Standard Connect account. It’s generally available to Stripe users everywhere other than Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brazil.
The Climate badge is only available on Stripe Checkout, Invoices, or Receipts. If you use a different product, you can download our badge asset kit to add the Climate logo to your site. The badge asset kit is available for download from your Climate page. However, all Climate Commitments users can publish a free, custom climate page in just a few clicks. This is also available from the same Climate page.
We recommend that you calculate the percentage of revenue that you’d like to allocate and set a custom fixed monthly contribution amount in the Climate page of your Dashboard. If you update the amount prior to the first of the next month’s billing cycle, you can adjust it as your revenue grows.
Thanks for your interest! Anyone can contribute directly to Stripe Climate here.
Stripe Climate suggests “percentage of revenue” options based off of the revenue you process through Stripe. If the listed options are too high or low, you can set a custom percentage contribution—or set a fixed monthly contribution.
This scenario will bring your account balance negative, which might result in your bank account being debited so that your Stripe balance is whole again. To avoid this, you can proactively add to your balance ahead of the contribution, which is debited on the first of the month. In these cases, Stripe sends you an email notification reminding you to top-up before a debit takes your balance negative.