Mobile money has long been the story of financial inclusion in emerging markets. From Kenya’s M-Pesa to Nigeria’s growing fintech sector, low-cost transactions transformed how people send and receive money. But in 2025, a new layer is being added: payments tied directly to carbon credits.
Two projects, one in Papua New Guinea, another in Ghana, are showing how blockchain can connect financial access with climate accountability. And if they succeed, they could offer a blueprint for how digital finance and climate action converge worldwide.
Papua New Guinea: Linking Everyday Payments to Carbon Reserves
In April 2025, Howarig Traders (HT), a Papua New Guinea based digital assets provider announced a partnership with Swiss blockchain firm Fedrok AG, to build T4G Pay, a payment system backed by the country’s carbon reserves. Papua New Guinea holds an estimated 3.1 billion metric tons of CO₂ reserves across its forests and mangroves.
The platform will issue the T4G Token (TGT), a USD-pegged token backed by these carbon reserves. Users will be able to pay through mobile apps, USSD codes for areas without internet, POS terminals, and even Visa cards.
Every transaction will be linked to carbon credits recorded on-chain. Landowners organized under Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs) will receive 35–45% of net carbon credit proceeds automatically via smart contracts. This creates a direct financial tie between local communities and climate stewardship.
Fedrok provides the blockchain infrastructure, backed by its “Proof of Green” consensus, a mechanism that only mints tokens when network activity is powered by verifiable renewable energy and backed by certified carbon credits.
Ghana: Carbon Credits Meet Labour Compliance
In West Africa, Fedrok is working with FarmRight Ghana, an agribusiness focused on sustainable farming. This project focuses less on retail payments and more on supply chains. Here, Fedrok’s blockchain records both carbon sequestration metrics (soil, biomass, regenerative practices) and labour compliance data.
That includes palm vein biometric verification of workers (to prevent child labour and falsified documents), verified labour contracts, and third-party audits, all immutably stored on-chain.
By connecting these verified datasets with tokenized carbon credits, the system gives international buyers, regulators, and financiers transparent proof that farming operations meet ESG standards. For farmers, it provides credibility that can give access to premium markets and sustainable finance.
More Than Pilot Projects
These initiatives are part of a wider effort to combine financial inclusion with carbon accountability. Projects like Celo’s ReFi pilots in Kenya or KlimaDAO’s tokenized carbon credits have explored similar ideas, but the ones in PNG and Ghana stand out for their ambition to integrate these mechanisms into daily economic life.
That matters because both countries sit at the heart of a global tension: communities with extensive carbon reserves usually remain excluded from financial systems. If models like T4G Pay and FarmRight scale, they could offer a template for how climate assets can be implemented into mainstream finance, not as speculative products, but as part of everyday transactions.
A Possible Blueprint
Financial exclusion and weak carbon market credibility are usually treated as separate issues. In reality, they overlap: the most underserved regions by banks are also the ones with the most critical carbon and biodiversity reserves.
By linking payments and compliance data directly to verifiable carbon credits, systems like T4G Pay and FarmRight’s platform create dual value flows: financial access for local communities and trusted offsets for global markets.
If these projects scale, they won’t just benefit PNG or Ghana. They could provide a repeatable blueprint for governments, NGOs, and fintechs seeking to fuse financial inclusion with climate responsibility, a model that could travel from Africa and the Pacific to other underserved regions.
For Fedrok, the company providing the blockchain infrastructure, this is evidence that a sustainability-focused Layer 1 can support more than speculative trading. For the crypto industry, it is a reminder that infrastructure designed with environmental integrity in mind can serve as both a payments rail and a compliance mechanism.