Information about the business
Aera Payment & Identification AS (“Aera”) develops and sells payment and ID services targeted at major players in retail, transport, and other sectors. The payment market is characterized by long value chains, and significant amounts of IT equipment, including payment terminals, are involved both as input factors in the company’s own service development and as part of the products in the market.
Payment services are essential for maintaining the stability of the financial system, and considerations of security and stability are strongly present in the way Aera operates. In addition, a strong and efficient focus on privacy is central to both the company’s payment and ID services. This has an impact on the company’s resource use.
Products and services
The company’s range of services consists of a set of solutions for allowing consumers to pay for goods and services quickly and efficiently, regardless of the channel. In addition, the services enable identification of consumers, both where this is necessary for a service as such and where consumers want the commercial operator to recognize them, such as when participating in loyalty programs.
The company’s services are necessary and useful for society, and the company’s goal is to offer them in the most sustainable way possible, within the framework in which it operates.
Markets
The payment and ID market is dynamic and highly competitive. This means that one must compete on the parameters in the market.
Aera experiences that ESG, both through regulatory enforcement and more general trends, is becoming an important parameter, and is positive about this. However, at present, functionality, service quality, and price are the prevailing competitive parameters in the market.
Approach to work on human rights and decent working conditions in the business management system
Aera has a centralized supplier management system that covers all quality and compliance parameters related to suppliers, including security, stability, privacy, and ESG-related information.
Aera collects information on these in the same process and assesses suppliers based on their overall score. This approach makes it easier to avoid undesirable conditions not being uncovered due to misfocus (e.g., IT security rather than human rights).
Internally, Aera has built a management system and a documentation system that significantly enables tracking of each business service through internal infrastructure and down the supply chain. The company believes that the ability to follow, and thereby monitor and measure, individual services from subcontractors through the company and out to customers will be a key capability in ESG work in the years to come, particularly to document resource use.
Whistleblowing channels and grievance mechanisms to help uncover negative consequences.
Internally, the legal director serves as a whistleblowing channel and has the opportunity, through a dotted line to the chairman of the board, to direct whistleblowing outside daily management if such a need should arise.
Aera has no external whistleblowing channel but is evaluating this on an ongoing basis.
Negative consequences and risk
Aera has assessed risks of child labor, forced labor/slavery, discrimination, and violation of the right to unionize, in its own operations and in the company’s supply chain. Furthermore, Aera has assessed our own ability to monitor the aforementioned risks in the supply chain.
No significant risk of negative consequences related to the above risks has been identified.
Aera prioritizes our ability to monitor the mentioned risks over the risks themselves, further prioritizing risk in our own operations over risk in the supply chain. No internal prioritization has been made between the risks as such.
Criteria for prioritization may be the potential negative consequence in a probable worst-case scenario, or it may be the realistic ability to mitigate risk. That is, potential damage or potential prevention of damage (efficiency). In Company, risks are prioritized based on efficiency because the company believes that this will prevent the most damage in the long run.
The highest prioritized risk is therefore the loss of the ability to monitor as such. Without this ability, we will not be able to detect and thus remedy anything. Furthermore, our ability to remedy is greater in our own operations than in the supply chain, so internal risks are more important than risks in the supply chain.
Mitigation Actions
Aera is represented in several industry associations and is a strong advocate for standardization, industry collaboration, and streamlining.
Aera operates in a digital industry, and the company’s supply chains do not extend beyond its own continent. Therefore, the main focus is on ensuring measurability and transparency by building systems that will also be able to handle tomorrow’s sustainability requirements related to resource consumption, climate, and regenerative business, that the company sets its priorities.
Aera has a long-term goal that all its services should be measurable, describable, and assessable individually so that the impact they have on the outside world will be transparent.
Risk Assessments
