Barclaycard are the latest company to jump on the green bandwagon - their latest offering, a card called ‘Breathe’ is aimed firmly at those looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

Barclaycard have promised to donate half of all the profits they make on the Breathe car to carbon emission reduction products. Customers will benefit from lower interest rates and special offers on ‘green’ products.

But is it worth it? Well, it depends on how you use the card. If you are the sort of person who pays off their credit card in full at the end of each month, Barclaycard will not be making any profit from you, thus there is little point. Barclaycard will only make profit if they are able to charge you money - either through interest charges or other fees.

If you really want to contribute, we would suggest getting a cashback credit card and donating any money you make from the cashback scheme to an environmental project of your choice. Alternatively, there are plenty of charity credit cards on the market which donate a percentage of your actual spend on the card to charity.

It’s not all bad news though - if you intend to make a lot of green purchases, there are some good offers attached to the Breathe card. For example, to encourage UK citizens to take more UK based holidays, they are offering cardholders up to 25% off CentreParcs holidays, or a new bike bought at Halfords will get the cardholder a 10% discount. Any public transport tickets will have the APR reduced to just 5.9% on those purchases (as opposed to 14.9%) however this does not include London travel.

There and plenty of ‘green’ financial products and companies out there on the market and it is good to see influential players in the market showing a conscience towards the environment. However, it is important to look deeply at the real offers behind the products to ensure that they really as good as they appear to be.

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