Payment cards for refugees

By SimpledCard on March 29, 2022

Payment cards – 3 min

The municipality of Medemblik in the Netherlands was the first to start using prepaid SimpledCard payment cards for refugees. And has thus found a way to distribute living expenses quickly and easily.

Organizing refugee shelters are often quite demanding for municipalities and participating organisations. It entails the coordination of accommodation and reception locations, scaling up the capacity for registration and securing the daily support for the refugees and their families.

Refugees often do not have access to their own bank accounts or have difficulty obtaining a new one.

First cards issued

Last week, mayor Streng and his team handed out the first debit cards at the town hall in Medemblik. Refugees can use these cards to make their own electronic payments. Living allowances are deposited on the card per family every week. This allows refugees to pay for food, drinks and clothes independently.

Patrick Jousma and Thomas van der Hoek from SimpledCard supported the municipality in setting up the card system. “It is really heartwarming to see how employees of the municipality and many volunteers are committed to helping this new group of refugees,” said Thomas.

“We’ve been working with various municipalities and security regions for years and are happy that we can make a small contribution to this,” adds Patrick.

Making it easier to process living costs for refugees

In an article on the Dutch platform “Binnenlands Bestuur”, city manager Anky Griekspoor explained how her team uses the cards and what benefits this brings for the payment of daily allowances.

Among other things, the article mentions the reduction of administrative workload, because the card system can be ‘connected’ to the client’s own financial accounts using a software interface. This facilitates the subsequent accountability to the state.

Read the full article “Debit card for Ukrainian refugees” from Binnenlands Bestuur here (in Dutch).