'What if everything you bought, bought you a better world?'. How Maddi and Glenn's GreenPay turns your clicks, taps and transfers into money for nature.
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Payment gateways might not sound sexy, but when you consider that we Australians make 23 million financial transactions everyday, that's a crazy big opportunity to find a way to help our home planet in a big way. 💰👉🌏
Maddi and Glenn have a good idea.
By building a system that's as good as or better than the one businesses use today, then giving 50% of profits to nature projects, they have found a big solution to the big problem of deforestation and the destruction of our natural world.
In this episode, you'll hear about:
😢 The incredible scale of the problem, with over 70% of earth's biodiversity lost in the last 50 or so years
🤑 The incredible potential scale of the solution with over a billion of dollars collected in transaction fees collected every year in Australia alone
🥇 Why 'green' and 'good' products need to be not just as good as but better than their competitors if they want to succeed
🛍️ The opportunities offered by commodity products to do good for people and planet and good for their business by creating positive impact
💤 The challenges of getting customers interested when, hey, it's a commodity product
💪 The idea that every startup needs social good baked in to succeed in this day and age
It's a little more business than some of our past episodes, and that's a good thing for anyone wanting to really explore the challenge of creating something with genuine impact then selling a 'good' product to customers once the initial hype has died down.
Huuuge thanks to Maddi and Glenn for sharing your story.
Learn more about GreenPay at www.greenpay.au
Want to know more? Here's what AI had to say after we gave it a listen...
Every tap and click moves money somewhere. We asked a simple question: what if those fees stopped padding bank profits and started restoring Australian nature instead? Glenn and Maddi from GreenPay walk us through the audacious plan to put nature at the centre of every transaction—without asking merchants to pay more or compromise on tech.
We dig into the plumbing of payments and why they partnered with global infrastructure rather than reinventing the rails, then shift to the heart of the model: a foundation that receives 50% of GreenPay’s profits to fund high-impact biodiversity projects. With guidance from leaders at Bush Heritage Australia, WWF and world-class ecologists, early grants support Indigenous-led stewardship in the Daintree, sea turtle monitoring in northern Queensland, land acquisition and restoration, and research into endangered orchids along the Great Ocean Road. It’s biodiversity as climate action, delivered now and measured over time.
Selling a “grudge” product isn’t glamorous, so the team meets buyers where they are. For sustainable brands, impact leads. For everyone else, they win on price, uptime and ease, then translate impact into something personal: the weekend hike, the annual fishing trip. They even turn surcharge complaints into a positive story—those cents fund local restoration instead of vanishing into a bank’s margins. Along the way, they share what surprised them (dream clients like Ben & Jerry’s in year one), their three biggest challenges (inertia, focus, scale), and practical advice for founders: pick recurring revenue, care deeply, get comfy with discomfort, and choose a co‑founder who balances your strengths.
If you run a cafe, a council, a uni or an energy company, choosing a processor that heals country turns a cost centre into a contribution.
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Chapters
1. Taps, Clicks, And A Big Idea (00:00:00)
2. Meet Green Pay And The Founders (00:00:42)
3. Origins In Activism And Purpose (00:01:02)
4. The Biodiversity Crisis Framing (00:02:40)
5. How Green Pay Works (00:04:27)
6. The Foundation And Governance (00:06:15)
7. Funding Priorities And Early Grants (00:07:40)
8. Purpose As Product Strategy (00:10:03)
9. Selling Impact To Different Buyers (00:12:50)
10. Overcoming Inertia In Switching (00:15:38)
11. Competing With Goliaths (00:18:01)
12. Building Through Partnerships (00:20:20)
13. Three Core Challenges: Inertia, Focus, Scale (00:22:05)
14. Purpose As Fuel For Persistence (00:25:10)
15. What Surprised Us: Early Wins (00:27:05)
16. Impact Startups And The Market (00:29:00)
17. Product First, Impact As The Edge (00:31:05)
18. Staying Top Of Mind With Stories (00:33:10)
19. Founder Sustainability And Habits (00:35:00)
20. Practical Tips For New Founders (00:37:20)
21. Where To Learn More And Final Thanks (00:40:10)
9 episodes