When most people think about payments, they think about speed, security, or convenience. What is often overlooked is the environmental cost associated with how money moves. Every swipe of a card, every ATM withdrawal, every cash shipment leaves a footprint. Payments are the unseen infrastructure of our daily lives, and how they are powered matters.

If digital assets are going to be the future of payments, they need to be a future that is sustainable. The opportunity is huge: digital payments have already proven they can lower emissions compared to cash and traditional systems, and digital assets are poised to accelerate that progress by eliminating even more intermediaries and overhead.

For Flexa, the green advantage isn’t a byproduct of digital assets; it’s an integral part of why the platform was initially built - as the foundation of the future of payments.

The hidden footprint of money

Climate action has become a business priority, not just a policy debate. Merchants are under growing pressure to measure and reduce emissions across their supply chains, including the financial services they use every day. Research commissioned by the European Payments Council found that digital payments consistently produced a smaller carbon footprint than cash, sometimes nearly six times lower per transaction. In Belgium, an in-store card payment was estimated at around 2.45 grams of CO₂, while withdrawing and spending cash pushed the total closer to 37 grams, once the trip to the ATM was included.

Those numbers might sound small in isolation, but when you consider the billions of people making payments every day across every store, website, and app in the world, they are too significant to ignore. Suddenly, a few grams per transaction become millions of tons of CO₂ avoided. Digital payments have already demonstrated significant climate benefits, and digital assets have the potential to further enhance those gains.

Moving past the proof-of-work debate

It’s true that proof-of-work cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) consume large amounts of energy relative to their present throughput—currently estimated to be tens of terawatt-hours each year. That level of consumption isn’t sustainable for everyday payments. But researchers at MIT point out that Bitcoin mining can also be one of the best ways to incentivize renewable energy development and grid-balancing technologies.

However, most stablecoin transactions today settle on proof-of-stake blockchains or instant payment rails, both of which use a fraction of the energy required by traditional blockchains. For example, Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake reduced its energy consumption by more than 99 percent. Independent studies by the European Automated Clearing House Association and Sweden’s central bank show that instant and account-to-account payments are among the least carbon-intensive ways to pay.

Flexa is built to be asset-agnostic, giving merchants the flexibility to accept digital assets that align with their values.  The majority of transactions on the platform  run through stablecoins and other energy-efficient assets, while still giving merchants the option to accept Bitcoin and similar currencies. By settling those payments instantly and off-chain, Flexa makes digital assets more practical, reliable, and sustainable in everyday commerce.

Building a future that lasts

For years, the climate impact of payments has been invisible. What’s different now is the scale of action being demanded. Digital payments have demonstrated that moving money electronically can reduce emissions. Digital assets can take that progress further, creating a system that is faster, fairer, and more sustainable.

Flexa’s belief is straightforward: the payments platform of the future must deliver for businesses, consumers, and the planet. By embedding sustainability into the foundation of digital asset payments, Flexa is helping to build a system that can endure, not just technologically, but environmentally. The green advantage is not an optional add-on. It is central to ensuring the future of money is one we can all afford to live with.

Want to make your payments greener? Learn how to integrate Flexa today.