On 1 July 2025, Groupcard B.V. was declared bankrupt. Its sister companies followed three weeks later, and a relaunch failed. To the outside world Groupcard was an invisible party — but the company sat behind the local gift passes of more than a hundred Dutch municipalities, about one in three according to the association of Dutch municipalities (VNG). Overnight, those passes were worth nothing. Total damage: roughly €14 million, largely public money.
We are not writing this to kick a company that no longer exists. We are writing it because the bankruptcy offers a rare, sharp look at something that normally stays invisible: the money flow behind a city pass. Anyone considering a city card today can read off from this case exactly which questions really matter. In this article we dissect what went wrong — and lay out, step by step, how the same money flow runs in the MijnEvent city cards module.
What happened
Municipalities mainly used Groupcard's passes as a gesture: a thank-you for volunteers and informal carers, or a helping hand for residents on a tight budget. The municipality bought the passes, the money went to Groupcard, and the recipient could spend the pass at participating shops.
Until the summer of 2025. The bankruptcy rendered tens of thousands of passes worthless in one blow — hitting exactly the groups the pass was meant for. Shopkeepers who were still owed money for goods already handed over joined the back of the creditors' queue. Municipalities, united through the VNG, prepared legal steps to recover lost public money. The administrator estimated the total damage at some €14 million.
The money flow that made this possible
To understand why it could get this big, you have to look at the route the money takes. In the Groupcard model — and in any model where a platform manages the card balances — it looks like this:
- The municipality (or a resident) buys a pass. The money goes to the platform.
- From that moment, the balance on the pass is a claim on the platform: the pass works as long as the platform exists and pays.
- The shopkeeper accepts the pass and hands over the goods immediately — but only gets the money later, paid out by the platform.
- Meanwhile, the money of all participating municipalities sits together: one central pot for the whole country.
That setup had two safety nets. Both failed:
- The third-party account turned out to offer no protection. The balances were held by a separate foundation, Stichting Derdengelden Groupcard — on paper neatly separated from the company. The administrator concluded, however, that the foundation's money appears to have been used for years to cover the company's own losses. By the time the bankruptcy came, the "protected" pot had already drained away.
- The licence requirement was ignored. Anyone managing other people's balances at this scale needs a licence as an e-money institution from the Dutch central bank (DNB) — with capital requirements, supervision and mandatory segregation of client money. Groupcard had no such licence and never applied for one. The supervision that should have prevented this simply did not know what was going on.
The lesson is uncomfortable but clear: whoever manages the central pot manages everything — and whoever stands next to it stands at the back of the queue in a bankruptcy. Passholders and shopkeepers across the country became creditors in one stroke, through the fall of a single company most of them had never even heard of.
Same card, different money flow: how MijnEvent does it
For the user, MijnEvent's city cards do the same as such a gift pass: buy online, spend in parts at participating shops, check the balance, top up. But under the bonnet, the money takes a fundamentally different route:
- A resident buys a card and pays with iDEAL | Wero. The amount lands directly on the issuing organisation's own Mollie account — the municipality, the business association, the BIZ — and from there on its own bank account. Mollie is a payment service provider regulated by the Dutch central bank.
- The balance is therefore a claim on the local issuer itself — the same party that issues the card and holds the residents' trust. Not on a national platform.
- The shopkeeper redeems in the scanning app; in the dashboard, the issuer sees in real time, per shop, what has been spent and what is outstanding.
- The issuer pays the shops itself, from its own account — ticked off with one click, and the shop is notified automatically.
There is no MijnEvent account holding card balances. Not as a stopover, not as a pooled account, not "just briefly". It cannot hold them, because the payment never passes through us — we only settle our module fee, automatically via Mollie. Managing other people's money is a payment service, and that does not belong with a software platform.
Safety of funds: the differences at a glance
| Groupcard model (centrally managed balances) | MijnEvent model (balances with the issuer) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the money sits | On the account of the platform or its foundation | On the issuing organisation's own (Mollie) account |
| The passholder's claim | On the platform | On the local issuer itself |
| Shopkeeper payouts | By the platform, from the central pot | By the issuer itself, from its own account |
| Licence question | Platform manages third-party money → licence required (and it was missing) | Platform manages no money; payments run through the regulated Mollie |
| If the platform goes bankrupt | Balances fall into the settlement; passholders and shopkeepers become creditors | Money and records are already with the issuer; the card keeps its value |
| Visibility of the money | Barely any from the outside — problems only surface afterwards | Real-time dashboard at the issuer, plus its own bank statement |
| Blast radius of an incident | One failing company hits all participating municipalities at once | Each programme stands on its own; there is no national pot |
So it really cannot happen at MijnEvent?
A "second Groupcard" requires one thing: a central pot holding other people's balances. That pot does not exist at MijnEvent — so no, this scenario cannot repeat itself here. If MijnEvent itself ever ceased to exist, that would affect the software, not the money: the balance records and the bank balance are already with your organisation, and the cards keep their value because the party holding the money is the same party that issued the card.
The money is always in your own possession — whatever happens. That is not only the safest route, but also the most future-proof one: platforms come and go, but a city card is set up for ten years or more. The only "price" is that your treasurer does the shop payouts personally. Why we think that is a fine trade — and how small that chore is in practice — is covered in our comparison with Stadsie, including six questions you should ask any provider.
Choose architecture, not promises
Groupcard had a third-party funds foundation. Groupcard had participating shops, satisfied municipalities and years of experience. What Groupcard did not have was a money flow in which the balances sat with the issuer itself. Promises, labels and constructions are only as strong as whoever honours them; architecture works even when nobody is watching.
Want to issue your own city card with the money on your own account from the very first second? Read how it works in A city voucher for your town, have a look at the module page or get in touch — and we will think along about the setup for your town centre.
