Barclaycard unveils credit card for green homeowners

Card to offer monthly repayments that match energy cost savings customers gain from investing in green home improvements

Barclaycard has today announced plans to develop a credit card aimed at helping customers cut their home's carbon footprint.

The new Barclaycard Breathe Easy card is planned to launch in summer next year and would offer customers the chance to exploit a preferential rate of interest when buying energy saving products.

Under the proposals, a customer using the new card to buy house insulation, for example, would face monthly repayments in line with the savings they would achieve from their energy costs. As a result, Barclaycard claims, energy saving home improvements would become far more affordable and, once the loan was paid off, customers would be able to enjoy lower energy bills for as long as they stayed in the house.

"Many homeowners are put off investing in greater home energy efficiency by the cost of doing so and the long time it takes for their investment to pay them back in terms of lower energy bills," said Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclaycard and a member of the CBI's climate change taskforce. "Barclaycard Breathe Easy addresses this challenge and is a good example of the role that financial institutions can play in helping consumers reduce household carbon emissions."

The announcement follows the launch this summer of Barclaycard's Breathe card, which donates half of its profits to projects dedicated to reducing carbon emissions and offers users discounts and preferential rates of interest on purchases of green products and services.