Gamifying Carbon Tracking Turns Payments into Participation.
Alipay Ant Forest Shows How Explore Brands Convert Utility to Impact.
Travel is no longer judged only on how many people it moves or how many nights it sells. The post-pandemic decade has seen a shift from travel as logistics to Explore as a mindset: people expect journeys to deliver cultural connection, environmental stewardship, and personal meaning alongside convenience. This is what Interbrand defines as the Explore Arena, a space where the value of brands is measured not by the size of their fleets or properties, but by how they expand access, preserve ecosystems, and deepen human experience.
Expectation in Explore, then, refers to the new baseline consumers and stakeholders bring to this sector. Efficiency and affordability are still required, but they are no longer sufficient. Brands must show how every interaction contributes to prosperity rather than extraction. That shift is visible in a set of breakthrough moves, innovations that don’t just improve operations, but reset what people expect of an entire category.
One of the clearest of these is Ant Forest, Alipay’s gamified carbon-tracking platform. Launched in 2016, it turned routine digital payments into a mechanism for environmental action. By embedding reforestation into daily life, it redefined what a “transaction” could mean: not just utility, but participation. With more than 650 million people engaging, and over 400 million trees planted across 2.8 million acres, it stands as proof that expectation in Explore is no longer abstract. It is operational, measurable, and commercial.
From Mini-Program to Global Recognition
Ant Forest launched in 2016 as a “mini-program” inside the Alipay app. It allows users to accumulate “green energy” by engaging in activities with lower carbon impact: commuting via public transport, purchasing train or plane tickets online, and recycling items. These credits act like a personal carbon account. Once a threshold is reached, users redeem them for a real tree planted in the desert on their behalf.
The scale is unprecedented. More than 650 million users have participated, planting over 400 million trees across 2.8 million acres, an area equivalent to 2.5 times the size of Singapore.
The United Nations recognized its impact in 2019, awarding Ant Forest the Champions of the Earth honor, its highest environmental accolade. For individuals who may want to contribute but lack the knowledge or access to act, Ant Forest removes barriers by embedding action directly into routine transactions.
From Utility to Participation
The consequences for Alipay extend far beyond optics. Ant Forest has enhanced the app’s visibility, accelerated adoption, and strengthened user trust and affinity. It reframed payments from being purely about speed and convenience into being acts of contribution. Each interaction became an opportunity to join collective environmental protection. By fostering socially and ecologically beneficial practices, Alipay signaled that financial services can broaden into platforms for stewardship.
Ant Forest also illustrates how digital technology expands the concept of Explore. Exploration is no longer limited to physical travel; it now includes participation in shared ecological projects. By transforming transactions into contributions, Alipay positioned itself as both a financial utility and a cultural driver, embedding responsibility into the daily life of hundreds of millions of people.
Consequences for Travel and Explore
The spillover effects for travel are direct. Users inspired by Ant Forest often travel to visit the deserts where their trees have been planted. This has spurred new categories of eco-tourism and reforestation experiences, creating demand for destinations built on contribution rather than consumption. Traditional travel brands can draw lessons from this model: by embedding carbon-positive practices into booking flows, loyalty programs, or mobility services, they can create new forms of demand grounded in responsibility.
Ant Forest therefore functions as more than a sustainability initiative. It is a blueprint for how brands in Explore can convert daily behaviors into long-term loyalty, regulatory goodwill, and new categories of demand. The case proves that gamification, when tied to tangible environmental impact, is not a gimmick, it is a market reset.
Way Forward
Embed Responsibility Into Utility: Make stewardship inseparable from routine actions, whether payments, bookings, or check-ins.
Use Gamification For Scale: Incentivize small, frequent behaviors that accumulate into visible ecological outcomes, reinforcing participation.
Translate Digital Into Physical: Link digital contributions to real-world travel experiences, turning ecological participation into destination demand.
Bottom Line: Utility Without Impact Will Be Obsolete
Alipay Ant Forest demonstrates that consumers now expect even mundane transactions to produce collective value.
Explore brands that fail to embed responsibility into the core of their platforms will not only miss loyalty gains, they will lose relevance to those who make impact inseparable from utility.
