Betaalvereniging Nederland
Betaalvereniging Nederland, known in English as the Dutch Payments Association, is the association of payment service providers in the Netherlands. It was founded on 29 November 2011 and has its office in Amsterdam. Its members are banks, payment institutions and electronic money institutions that offer payment services in the Dutch market.
Betaalvereniging Nederland organizes the collective tasks in Dutch payments, with the aim of keeping payments secure, efficient, reliable and accessible for everyone. The association coordinates the payment infrastructure, runs a knowledge center with facts and figures and represents its members in Dutch and European standard setting.
Members and membership
Betaalvereniging Nederland has 58 members, from the large Dutch banks ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank to bunq, Revolut, Qonto, Worldline and Worldpay. Membership is open to payment service providers that are active in over-the-counter payments, online payments or account-to-account payments in the Netherlands. The members fund the association together and send their specialists to its working groups.
The general members meeting sets the strategy, approves the annual accounts and usually meets twice a year. Two advisory councils, one for banks and one for payment and electronic money institutions, advise the management of the association. Working groups of specialists from the members prepare policy on cards, giro payments, open banking and standardization.
Director and management board
Arjan Bol has been managing director of Betaalvereniging Nederland since 1 April 2025. Arjan Bol was previously responsible for payments at ING in the Netherlands and held several roles at Mastercard, including country manager for the Netherlands. He succeeded Gijs Boudewijn, who retired from the association at the end of May 2025.
The management board has three independent members: Gottfried Leibbrandt, the former chief executive of SWIFT, Guus Slik and John Visser. Six further board members come from member firms, among them Hans Overeem of ING, Suzan van Eeten of Rabobank, Erica Kostelijk of ABN AMRO and Paul Scholten of Buckaroo for the payment institutions. De Nederlandsche Bank and the Dutch Banking Association take part in the board as observers.
Payment figures for the Netherlands
The knowledge center of Betaalvereniging Nederland publishes yearly figures on payments in the Netherlands. In 2025, 95 percent of debit card payments at the point of sale were contactless, and roughly one in five payments in shops was still made in cash. More than 99.5 percent of Dutch residents live within five kilometers of a cash machine or another cash withdrawal point.
Domestic account-to-account payments grew from 1.92 billion credit transfers in 2022 to 2.27 billion in 2025. In the same period, transfers to other European countries rose from 204 million to 332 million, an increase of 63 percent. In online shopping, iDEAL and payment cards together cover about 85 percent of the Dutch e-commerce payment market.
Upcoming fintech and finance events
Fraud and cybercrime cooperation
Betaalvereniging Nederland set up PI-ISAC in 2020 together with some of its members and the Digital Trust Center of the Dutch government. Payment institutions use this platform for the confidential exchange of information on cybersecurity, fraud and money laundering incidents. Stripe, Mollie and Worldline take part, along with payment institutions that are not members of the association.
In the New Payments Fraud Forum, banks, payment institutions and crypto platforms meet with the police, the public prosecution service, the tax authority and the financial intelligence unit. The forum deals with external fraud that hits payments and meets four times a year, both in person and online, with English as its working language. External speakers often present new legislation and trends in crypto fraud to the participants.
Position on the digital euro
In September 2026, Betaalvereniging Nederland called for a digital euro that is useful, simple and affordable for society as a whole. The association expects the digital euro to come and now focuses on how it is designed and introduced. Banks and other payment service providers would distribute and secure it, and the association backs the five principles of the Dutch Banking Association, including an introduction in stages.
Annual conference and stakeholder forum
The annual conference of Betaalvereniging Nederland brings together speakers from banks, payment firms and security and infrastructure providers in Amsterdam. The 2026 edition at ING Cedar ran under the motto "The show must go on" and dealt with the availability of payment systems. On behalf of its members, the association also consults representatives of end users and other stakeholders in a stakeholder forum.
Betaalvereniging Nederland represents its members in the National Forum on the Payment System, which De Nederlandsche Bank chairs. The 2011 report of that forum to the Dutch parliament (in Dutch) named the founding of the association among the main activities of that year.
Address, press and publications
The office of Betaalvereniging Nederland is at Gustav Mahlerplein 33-35, 1082 MS Amsterdam. Journalists, politicians and public administrators find figures, research and background information in the knowledge center of the association. Betaalvereniging Nederland also publishes the payments newsletter Betaaljournaal, an annual report and a roadmap for Dutch payments.
Betaalvereniging Nederland and Finance Loop
Banks and payment institutions in the Netherlands and in Germany work on the same questions, from instant payments and the move from iDEAL to Wero to the design of the digital euro. Finance Loop discusses these questions with practitioners at its events in the Payments & Digital Money track.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.