NatWest and Microsoft to help UK businesses reduce carbon emissions

By Megha Bhattacharya

NatWest and Microsoft have teamed up to help reduce carbon emissions for UK businesses with the help of digital technologies. The collaboration, building on Microsoft’s cloud, data and AI platform alongside NatWest Group’s deep customer understanding, will support business customers in understanding how and where they can reduce their emissions.

Alison Rose, Chief Executive Officer of NatWest Group, said, “Tackling climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time. As the leading bank in the UK for businesses, we have a significant responsibility, and the ability, to encourage, enable and to lead the way in the UK to transition to a net-zero carbon economy. Cross-industry collaboration and powerful partnerships will help to accelerate the speed of the transition, and I am very pleased we are working with Microsoft to help Britain’s businesses to understand and tackle their carbon footprints.”

In January 2020, Microsoft announced its goal to be carbon negative by 2030 and remove more carbon from the environment than it has emitted since its founding by 2050. NatWest Group has set ambitions to make its own operations climate positive by 2025, having achieved net-zero in 2020, and to halve the climate impact of its financing activity by 2030.

Clare Barclay, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft UK commented, “At Microsoft, we grounded our carbon-negative strategy in the belief that technology can help solve the world’s biggest challenges. We are focused upon pulling all of the levers of influence we have including our operations as a customer, supplier, investor, employer, policy advocate and partner. We are proud to partner with NatWest on its bold sustainability aspirations. Partnerships help us accelerate progress and together I’m looking forward to enabling more UK businesses to drive the progress we so urgently need.”

Recently, NatWest announced the roll-out of a new upgrade to its flagship open banking payments service – Payit by NatWest. The new development will allow businesses to send payments directly to customers without the need for their bank details. The company launched Payit in June, last year, to enable customers to make instant online payments to retailers without the need for a debit or a credit card. The service uses Open Banking infrastructure to allow UK banks’ customers to pay for services provided by the retailers who use the payment option.