Groupcard collapsed and took the balances of more than a hundred Dutch municipalities with it. MijnEvent is not a card network but software: your municipality, business association or BID issues the pass itself — under your own name, with the balance in your own account.
Video in Dutch.
A city pass is a card in the name of a municipality, business association or region that lets residents spend locally — as credit in euros, as discounts, or both. Since Groupcard B.V. went bankrupt on 1 July 2025, roughly €14 million in balances evaporated across more than a hundred municipalities and issuers have been looking for a replacement. MijnEvent supplies software rather than a card network: your organisation issues the pass under its own name and branding, residents buy or top up with iDEAL | Wero, and that money lands straight in the issuer's own Mollie account — never in a platform's pooled account. Shops redeem with their own scanning app, and you see per shop what needs to be paid out. Cost: a limited-time €499 per year (regular €1,250) plus €0.35 per issued or topped-up pass.
Not to kick a company while it is down, but because every issuer now looking for a replacement should carry this lesson into their requirements.
The Netherlands has 342 municipalities. The VNG estimated around 114 were affected; more than 120 municipalities went on to organise jointly. An official list of names was never published.
For years Groupcard was the party behind dozens of local gift cards, carer passes, volunteer passes and municipal white-goods and insulation schemes. Municipalities bought passes — often with public money — and handed them to informal carers, volunteers and residents on a low income. On 1 July 2025 Groupcard B.V. was declared bankrupt, shortly followed by its sister companies. A restart failed. Passes that worked fine the day before were worth nothing overnight.
The balances were held by a separate foundation — on paper exactly the construction that should have protected cardholders and shopkeepers. The trustee concluded, however, that this money appears to have been used for years to cover the company's own losses. The protection existed on paper, not in practice.
Anyone holding other people's balances at this scale needs a licence as an electronic money institution according to the Dutch central bank (DNB). Groupcard did not have one and never applied for one.
The national government stated it had no overview of affected municipalities. The VNG estimated roughly a third of the 342 municipalities; broadcaster NOS reported more than 120 municipalities joining forces. Exactly which municipalities those are has never been made public — so anyone looking for a replacement is largely on their own.
The lesson is not "this one company did a bad job". As soon as card balances sit centrally with a platform or its foundation, you depend on how well that platform manages them — and from the outside you have almost no visibility. A third-party foundation is a promise, not a guarantee.
Sources for these figures (Dutch):
The terms get used interchangeably — including in tenders — which produces quotes that cannot be compared. This is the distinction that matters.
A municipal card for a specific group — residents on a low income, informal carers, volunteers, children. The holder gets discounts at participating providers, often combined with an annual budget or child allowance. The municipality decides who is eligible.
Recognisable as: Rotterdampas, Stadjerspas, ZaansePas, Westlandpas, Vrijstad Culemborgpas
Prepaid credit in euros under the name of your town, spendable at every participating business. Anyone can buy or receive one — no eligibility, no assessment. A municipality or association can also hand it out as a reward or allowance, and then it looks a lot like a city pass.
Recognisable as: Meppelpas, Westeinderpas, Nunspeet Kadopas, Almelo Kadobon, Amstelveens Cadeau
Credit that only works at your own till: the theatre, the sports club, the festival. No network of shops, no payouts to third parties. Simpler to run, but it does not keep spending power in the whole town.
Included in MijnEvent as standard, no module needed
The Local vouchers & city cards module delivers the credit model today: a pass in the name of your town, with a balance in euros, redeemable at every participating business, toppable up and with payouts per shop. Municipalities widely use that model as a carer, volunteer or low-income pass: you load an amount and hand it to the group you define yourself.
The classic discount pass — discount percentages per participating provider and eligibility checks — is an extension launching later this year, on top of everything that already exists. Is your tender or requirement list ahead of that? Tell us how your scheme works and we will align the planning and the setup, and say honestly what is already possible today.
Six steps. Not a card network you join, but your own programme that you keep in hand.
The pass is named after your town — the Meppelpas, the Havelte Pass, your BID's voucher. Your own logo, colours and order page on your own subdomain or your own domain.
You invite businesses by email. Each shop sets its own PIN and gets a scanning app on a phone or tablet — no extra hardware, no till integration.
Bought online with iDEAL | Wero on your own page, or handed over physically. An email address is not required: a handed-out pass works without an account.
The shop scans the QR or types the code, sees the balance and redeems an amount — in parts if needed. Double redemption is technically impossible; the remaining balance simply stays. The shop then books the amount in its own till, in the way that suits that till: an instruction on screen, its own EAN code or a barcode carrying the amount (beta).
Scan the QR or type the code on the public page, pick an amount and pay. An empty or expired pass is instantly usable again and its validity is extended — at no cost to the holder.
The dashboard shows per shop what was redeemed and what needs to be paid out. Settle with one click and the shop is notified automatically. The money goes from your account to the shop — nobody sits in between.
Four short screen recordings from the real system — no mock-ups. Ninety seconds in total.
Video in Dutch.
From creating the programme to the first pass: name, branding, value and validity set in the dashboard.
Video in Dutch.
The public page: buy with iDEAL | Wero, check the balance and see which businesses take part.
Video in Dutch.
Log in with email and PIN, scan the QR, see the balance and redeem an amount — including part of it. And then the amount in the shop's own till, in four ways.
Video in Dutch.
Check the balance and add credit to an existing pass — even when it is empty or expired.
Three roles, three screens — and one set of records feeding all of them.
A resident does not buy "a pass on a platform", but the pass of their own town or shopping street. So everything they see carries your name, your logo and your colours; MijnEvent is the technology underneath.
You decide what the pass is called — the Meppelpas, the Havelte Pass, your region's voucher. That name then drives every text: the order page says "Buy a Meppelpas", and it reads the same in the confirmation email and on the pass in the phone. Your organisation is named as the issuer alongside it, so it is clear who stands behind it.
Upload a photo of your own centre in the dashboard — the high street, the market, the harbour — plus your logo (PNG, JPG or WebP, max 4 MB). The public page then opens with your photo as the hero and your logo on top, on the order page and the balance page at once. No uploads? The page falls back neatly to the standard layout.
Under Dashboard → Branding you set your brand colours and fonts: buttons, cards, background, text and how rounded the corners are. The public city pass pages pick that up straight away. We keep an eye on contrast for you: if a button colour is too light for white text, the system switches the text itself so WCAG AA still holds.
You write the emails pass holders receive: subject, greeting, body and sign-off, with your own attachment if you want to send your terms along. The sender reads "your organisation via MijnEvent" and replies land with you, not with us.
Pass holders add the pass to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. That digital pass carries your logo and your programme's name too — no MijnEvent card sitting between the boarding passes and the loyalty cards.
At the bottom of the public page sits "Made possible by" with your partners: name, logo, link and the order you choose. Above it are the participating businesses with their own logos. And if you want to sell the pass on your existing website, you simply embed the order and balance module there.
For municipalities with a strict brand policy and associations marketing the pass as their own product, the whole environment can run under your flag:
This deliberately is not a switch in the dashboard — an own domain and branding work down to the emails is something we set up per programme. So it carries a price on request, on top of the regular module fees. It changes nothing about what the system can do: underneath the custom wrapping runs exactly the same engine.
To be clear: name, logo, header photo, colours, typefaces, email wording and sponsors are part of the module and you set them yourself — no need to call us for those. Only the own domain and the fully platform-free version are custom work.
Not which features a platform has, but whose account holds the balance between purchase and spending.
A resident buys a pass or tops one up with iDEAL | Wero. The amount lands directly in the issuing organisation's own Mollie account — and from there in its own bank account. Mollie is a payment service provider regulated by the Dutch central bank.
We settle nothing but our module fee through Mollie. We never hold the balance itself; there is no pooled account and no intermediary foundation.
Only at that moment does that shop acquire a claim. In the dashboard you see per business exactly what was spent and what still needs to be paid out.
The issuing organisation pays the shops itself, from its own account. You put together a payout round, download the SEPA payment file and import it at your own bank; MijnEvent draws up the self-billed invoice on behalf of each shop and emails it along.
What that means
At Groupcard €14 million evaporated because one central party managed the balances of more than a hundred municipalities at once. If that party falls, everything falls. In this model that central pot simply does not exist: the balance of every pass sits with the organisation that issued it, in its own town. Two towns never share one pot. If MijnEvent stopped existing tomorrow, that would be annoying for the software — but the money and the records are already with you. A platform bankruptcy cannot touch the value of the passes, because the platform never held that value.
Because the money sits with your organisation, your organisation also does the payouts. The treasurer gains a recurring chore. The dashboard makes that chore as small as possible — you select the shops, get a ready-made SEPA payment file for your own bank, and the self-billed invoices are drawn up and sent on the shops' behalf — but it is work a central card platform would take off your hands. In return, you never have to wait and see what someone else does with your money.
Because the money sits with you, you pay the shops. That is exactly one round per period — the dashboard prepares the rest for you.
Which document form you use is set per programme — how a city voucher is treated for VAT is a question for your accountant. Something wrong with one line? Set it to failed: its redemptions are released and appear in the next round by themselves.
Dutch payment law has an exemption designed precisely for this kind of card: the limited network exclusion (PSD2, implemented in the Dutch Financial Supervision Act). A payment instrument usable only within a limited network of providers — every shop has a direct contract with the issuer, the network is confined to one town or area, and the pass cannot be exchanged for cash — falls outside the licensing requirement; DNB names gift cards as an example itself. One hard limit: once total spending value exceeds €1 million per twelve months, a notification duty towards DNB applies, after which DNB assesses whether the network really is "limited".
This is general information, not legal advice. Whether the exclusion applies in your situation depends on how your programme is set up — have it reviewed by a lawyer or put it to DNB before you start. What we can say with certainty is where the money sits: with you.
Two legitimate routes with one fundamental difference: where the balance sits. Stadsie is the best-known provider of the first model; MijnEvent supplies the second.
| Topic | Central card platform (e.g. Stadsie) | MijnEvent |
|---|---|---|
| Who issues the pass | The platform; your town joins the existing card programme | Your organisation, under its own name and branding |
| Where the balance sits | With a central third-party foundation of the platform | In the issuing organisation's own (Mollie) account |
| Who pays the shops | The platform, from the central foundation | The issuer, via the payout overview per shop |
| If the platform stops | Depends on the foundation and the wind-up | Money and records are already with you; the pass keeps its value |
| Sales channel | The platform's central web shop | Your own order page, on your own subdomain or domain |
| Empty or expired pass | Often limited extension, sometimes against an administration fee taken from the balance | Topping up reactivates the pass and extends validity — at no cost to the holder |
| Work for the treasurer | Minimal: the platform handles payouts | You pay out yourself — one click per shop, with automatic notification |
| Pricing | Usually on quotation, not published | Public: a limited-time €499 per year (regular €1,250) + €0.35 per pass + €0.05 per redemption |
| Spendable at | The businesses the platform has signed up | The businesses you sign up |
Fair is fair: an established card network like Stadsie has built something you cannot replicate in a month. By its own account that is more than 800 participating shops and hospitality venues across twelve cities, over 100,000 gift cards sold and some €3.5 million in local spending. And the principle that cards are only spendable at local businesses — no chains — we wholeheartedly share. If you want to join a proven network quickly and have no objection to the balance being managed centrally, that is a perfectly good route. Our conviction is simply that a local pass is only truly local when the money is local too — from the first second, not only after payout.
To be clear: this page does not claim that anything is going wrong financially at Stadsie or any other provider — there is no indication of that whatsoever. It is about the architecture of the money flow: who depends on whom, and what happens if a platform — any platform — ever falls over. Groupcard had a third-party foundation too.
What a municipality, business association or BID actually has to do to get a running programme again.
A dead pass from a bankrupt issuer cannot technically be "restored" — that balance is a claim in a bankruptcy. What you can do is compensate holders with a new pass worth their old balance. Many municipalities chose that route. So first decide which group you compensate and with what amount.
From the old records, an export or your own issuance list: who held which pass and for what amount. A simple list with name, email address (or postal address) and amount is enough to issue new passes.
Usually the same businesses as before. Each shop gets an email invitation, sets its own PIN and can scan immediately — no hardware, no installation.
Name, branding, value, validity period and the order page. If you want your own domain instead of a subdomain, that is available as bespoke work.
Digitally by email (with Apple Wallet or Google Wallet) or handed over physically. From that moment every euro runs through your own account and the dashboard shows what to pay out per shop.
Outstanding claims against a bankrupt issuer run through the trustee and are separate from a new programme. We are not a party in that wind-up and give no advice on it — we make sure the new programme is up quickly and safely.
Not every town has a collapsed pass. Plenty of places have a paper gift voucher that has worked fine for years — and it does not have to go.
The paper voucher of a retailers' association, town centre management, tourist office or municipality follows the same pattern nearly everywhere. Not because someone designed it that way, but because value sits on a slip of paper and paper simply cannot do a few things:
Digitising does not mean that voucher disappears. It means the value sits as a balance behind a unique code instead of on a numbered slip — with the same name on it, the same participants underneath and the same issuer behind it.
On paper: Fixed denominations mean stacking: every amount has to exist as a separate slip.
Digital: Alongside four familiar amounts there is an 'Other amount' field: the buyer types in any amount from €5.00 to €150.00.
On paper: The voucher is used up in one go; whatever is not spent stays with the shopkeeper.
Digital: Only what is spent gets deducted. The remainder stays as a balance, including at the next shop.
On paper: Take in, void, collect, post and wait until the administration is done.
Digital: The shopkeeper scans the QR code and deducts the amount. What each shop is owed is visible live.
On paper: Only over the counter at an outlet, during opening hours.
Digital: Online purchase is added alongside, delivered by email and instantly sendable as a gift. The outlets stay outlets.
The name stays yours, the participants stay the same and the money lands in your own Mollie account — exactly as it already sat with the issuer for the paper voucher. Paper vouchers in circulation stay valid until their own expiry date.
Read how digitising worksA pass does not need twenty years of history. The Meppelpas also started as an idea with a name — and "the Havelte Pass" rolls off the tongue just as well.
Every town names it differently — Meppelpas, Westeinderpas, Almelo Kadobon, Amstelveens Cadeau, Cadeaukaart Gemeente Barneveld, Vrijstad Culemborgpas, Deventer Doet Pas, Nunspeet Kadopas, Rijssen-Holten Pas, Samen in Steenbergen Pas, Zin in Zevenaar-cadeaukaart, ZwijndrechtPas, to name a few. Pass, voucher or gift card: the name follows the town, the technology underneath is the same.
For example Havelte, Ruinen or South-West Drenthe. Nothing is stored or sent.
Names for Havelte:
Whichever name you pick, the technology underneath is the same. Pass, voucher, card or gift card — it is one programme with credit, participating shops and a payout overview.
Four kinds of issuer, one model — and in all four cases the money sits with the issuer.
For informal carers, volunteers, low-income schemes or an energy and white-goods allowance. An amount on a pass, spendable at local businesses instead of a web shop far away.
The classic local gift card: spending power that stays in your own centre, with a payout overview the treasurer can actually work with.
A voucher covering the whole designated area, with every participant's logo on the public page and figures per business in the dashboard.
Several villages under one name: a regional voucher that connects them and keeps the money in the region.
You know up front what you pay — and never a percentage of the value of the passes.
Limited-time price; regular €1,250 per year. Includes your own programme, branding, public page and shop apps.
From 25,000 passes in twelve months €0.28, from 50,000 €0.21 — custom above that. A rolling twelve-month window, not a calendar year.
Settled against the payout to the shop that redeemed: ten redemptions means €0.50 less paid out. The issuer passes it on with the next pass.
On top of that Mollie charges its own transaction fees on the payments; those run directly through your own Mollie account. A percentage of the pass value never goes to MijnEvent.
See all pricingThis page names existing passes and providers — from the Meppelpas to Stadsie. That is meant as recognition and information, not as a judgement: the figures on the bankruptcy come from public sources (news reports, council documents and official schemes), and the organisations named are not affiliated with MijnEvent. A mention therefore implies no cooperation and no endorsement.
Is something incorrect, or would you like a mention adjusted or removed? Email us and we will change it.
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