Reset Connect Event Report: Putting Finance Under the Net Zero Microscope

When it comes to climate action, supply chains are under the microscope, yet finance, the very bloodstream of the global economy, has largely stayed in the shadows. At last week’s Reset Connect conference, GoodFX founder Rob Hayward and Furthr COO Paul Dunca set out to change that narrative.

From the stage, Rob Hayward pulled no punches:

“Nobody thinks about how purposeful capital moves, the fees it generates for non-aligned institutions, and the environmental impact of that movement.”

He’s right. If finance is the plumbing of our economy, few have asked how clean the pipes really are.

Shining a light on invisible impact

GoodFX was born from the idea that businesses can, and should, put financial flows to work for good. As a B Corp, we already help our clients repurpose FX fees into funding for environmental and social projects. But as Rob explained, there was still a blind spot:

“When we looked at carbon accounting for banking, we just saw very loose proxies being applied and no real light being shone there.”

That’s why GoodFX partnered with sustainability specialists Furthr, tasking them with an ambitious challenge: track the carbon footprint of every single foreign exchange (FX) transaction down to the gram.

Crunching the numbers: From trade to charity

Paul Dunca took Reset Connect attendees behind the scenes of the analysis:

“We began by tracing a single trade from the moment a client sets up a GoodFX trading account, all the way to the charitable donation which sits at the tail end of GoodFX’s service to clients.”

Rather than rely on generic industry averages, Furthr’s team built a model around the specific actions that make up an FX trade:

• Client Onboarding

• Conversions (the FX trade itself)

• Payments (moving money internationally)

• Receipt of Funds

• Charity Donations

  
  

At each stage, Furthr combined GoodFX’s own operational data (like server power consumption) with carefully chosen external proxies - values drawn from ISO-aligned studies but intentionally rounded upward to avoid any risk of underestimating emissions.

The result?

A full transaction on the GoodFX platform carries a conservative footprint of 332.12 grams of CO₂e. That’s the total carbon cost of moving money: from live FX rates to SWIFT messages, cloud servers, and even the carbon overhead of our built-in charitable donations.

Paul comments:

“Two-thirds of the 0.33 kg CO₂e we found per trade sits in infrastructure GoodFX can influence only indirectly. That’s why we documented every assumption and built the model to respond instantly as better data becomes available.”

Data, Decarbonisation, and Driving Change

This work is more than a carbon audit. It’s a call to the finance industry to step up.

As Rob put it:

“Finance deserves scrutiny like any other purchased service.”

At Reset Connect, the message was clear: finance cannot sit outside the sustainability conversation. And this is only the beginning. GoodFX has already mitigated its emissions (both operational and per-transaction) via investments in high-quality carbon removals, such as smallholder biochar projects in India and Ghana that lock carbon into soils for centuries.

Looking ahead, GoodFX plans to expand this Net Zero technical work into other banking products like invoice finance and business cards, pushing for the same rigour and transparency across the financial landscape. As Rob remarks:

“The point has been to use our technical expertise to put a line in the sand. Better data drives a better commitment to decarbonisation.”

At GoodFX, we believe the movement of money shouldn’t cost the Earth. And after Reset Connect, it’s clearer than ever that finance is ready for its own sustainability reset.

To download the full report from GoodFX and Furthr, click here.