How Mastercard Is Going Green With Its Payment Cards

In the war against waste and in favour of a circular economy, plastic is one of the biggest enemies. Yet plastic is a core component of many of the things we can’t live without—including bank cards. There are more than 25 billion plastic bank cards in circulation globally, many of which are made from virgin plastics like PVC, which don’t break down and decompose naturally.

Six billion more are produced each year as the existing cards age out of circulation, with the average life cycle of a payment card being three to four years.

Plastics recycling is possible, but more difficult in bank cards, because of the additional tech embedded within most cards, including the microchip that you tap on payment terminals for that morning coffee. Add to that the long wire antenna that snakes back and forth along the length of the card beneath its surface to enable contactless payments to work. As a result, most cards end up on the scrap heap, rather than in the recycling plant.

Mastercard wants to fix that, consigning the concept of unrecyclable, virgin plastic bank cards to history.

In April, the company announced it will require card issuers to remove all first-use PVC plastics from cards issued on its network by January 2028, replacing them with more sustainable, environmentally friendly materials such as rPVC, rPET, or PLA—three alternative plastics commonly used in packaging, construction materials, and recycled bottles. It’s a world-first from the company that currently has more than three billion cards in circulation.

“At Mastercard we are leading and shaping our industry’s collective pursuit of a more sustainable, more environmentally conscious future,” says Ajay Bhalla, president of cyber & intelligence at Mastercard. “As our customers respond to increased consumer desire to make more eco-friendly choices, we are making a firm commitment to reducing our environmental footprint—for the benefit of people, planet, and inclusive growth.”

The progress towards 2028 will be a decade in the making for Mastercard, who first began analysing which sustainable materials could be recycled back in 2018. The Sustainable Card Program has signed up more than 473 card issuers across 94 different countries, working in partnership with major card manufacturers to transition more than 343 million cards across its network to recycled and bio-based materials.

The Sustainable Card Program is “a huge step for financial services,” says Taylan Turan, group head of retail banking and strategy, wealth and personal banking at HSBC. “New sustainable materials, such as rPVC, offer our sector a clear way to accelerate its efforts to build a more sustainable future.” It’s a plan that Helen Bierton, chief banking officer at Starling Bank, also sees as a beneficial one. “This initiative is a welcome next step in the journey to a sustainable future,” she says.

But Mastercard is now going one step further, by establishing a blueprint for card recycling that can be replicated across the world, including collection, transportation, and recycling. In June, Mastercard launched a pilot scheme in the UK with HSBC that allows customers to drop off their plastic bank cards into a dedicated collection box, from where the contents within are shredded and sent to a dedicated recycling partner that separates the material and smelts the plastic and metal chip into new products.

In the UK, the recycling partner Mastercard is working with is TerraCycle, which has been tackling hard-to-recycle products, from toothpaste tubes and mascara wands to water filters and coffee pods, for more than 20 years.

It’s a whole of life approach that puts the planet, rather than profit, first—and encourages small changes to make a big impact. “Propelling the evolution of the payment card into a more sustainable future is the next—and necessary—step,” says Bhalla.

Learn more about the initiative here.