Sustainable Digital Finance

Digital innovation is significantly reshaping the financial services landscape, pioneering new avenues for sustainable access, distribution, and management of financial resources. A myriad of real-world applications, such as enabling digital supply chain finance across agricultural and fashion value chains, and leveraging digital currencies to fuel smart meters in schools in developing nations, are continually emerging. Moreover, the advent of digital investment marketplaces, crowdfunding platforms, token-based financing, new payment infrastructures, digital wallets for waste management, and blockchain-based autonomous decentralized organizations, among others, underline the expansive and inclusive capabilities of digital finance. The potential of digital innovation extends far beyond our current imaginings. In this vein, this book seeks to present visionary, yet practical, perspectives that employ innovative technologies to address overarching sustainability challenges.

This is an open access book.

Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven is Managing Director of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH since October 2020. Ms. Hoven is a development economist with more than 30 years of international experience focusing strongly on sustainability and climate issues. From 2010 to 2014, she served as World Bank Group Executive Director representing Germany.

Prof. Soh Young In is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Affiliate Faculty of the Graduate School of Green Growth and Sustainability. Her research interest is demonstrating environmental, social, and economic incentives related to low-carbon transition and implementing sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems through behaviour change of various stakeholders.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Puschmann is Founder and Executive Director of the Global Center for Sustainable Digital Finance at Stanford University and the University of Zurich. In addition, he was Founder and Director of one of the first FinTech research labs worldwide, the Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab at the University of Zurich, Professor at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada, Co-Founder of the Association Swiss FinTech Innovations, Co- Founder of the Swiss Green FinTech Network, Co-Founder of Extreme Tech Challenge Switzerland and Member of the Swiss Innovation Council Innosuisse.