Neutral API unlocks carbon distribution
Brennan Spellacy, CEO of Patch, on the API layer of the carbon stack
The real limit is distribution, not carbon selection. Stripe Climate started as a native add on for businesses already running payments through Stripe, which made adoption easy inside Stripe’s merchant base but narrowed the market to companies inside that payments rail. By contrast, Patch is built as a neutral API layer that can sit behind marketplaces, software platforms, and climate tools regardless of who processes the underlying payment.
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Stripe Climate launched in 2020 as a way for Stripe users to direct a fraction of revenue to carbon removal in a few clicks. That product design piggybacked on Stripe’s existing dashboard and payments flow, which is powerful for current merchants but naturally tied early usage to the Stripe ecosystem.
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Stripe later broadened the product with Climate Orders, an API and dashboard tool for buying specific tons, and Patch itself became a user of that product. That shows the market evolving from closed in product utility toward more modular infrastructure that other climate platforms can plug into.
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Patch’s role in the stack is to connect fragmented systems, project supply, accounting tools, and demand channels. In practice, that means a customer can buy credits or carbon removal through another software product without switching its payment processor, which is a much wider integration surface than a payment linked feature.
This is heading toward a more open carbon software stack. Stripe will keep extending climate products beyond its core payments base, but the bigger opportunity sits with neutral infrastructure that can connect many software systems at once. As climate buying moves from simple contributions to embedded procurement, the winning layer is likely to be the one that plugs in everywhere.