What if every time you bought a beer at a festival or picked up dinner in a takeaway box, you could do something good for the planet – and get money back for it?
Thanks to Switchio’s technology and a partnership with TOMRA, that’s now a reality.
“By combining state-of-the-art contactless payment technology with TOMRA’s automated return points, we’re enabling people to contribute to reuse simply and conveniently – and get their deposit back in the process,” says Geir Sæther, Head of TOMRA Reuse.
Our Role: The Technology That Makes It Work
Behind the seamless process is Switchio. Our platform provides the complete infrastructure for payments and refunds – from activating the deposit at the point of purchase to automatically returning it when the cup is handed back. A secure digital token links the returned cup with the original transaction, ensuring that the refund reaches the customer’s bank account within seconds.
Pilot in Denmark, Rollout in Lisbon
The first live deployment began in early 2024 in Aarhus, Denmark, where the system was piloted on a smaller city scale. Over 18 months, more than one million cups were returned, with a return rate exceeding 85 percent. The results confirmed the system works – and laid the foundation for further rollout.
Building on that success, Lisbon became the first European capital to implement a city-wide reusable cup system in June 2025. The first return points were installed at kiosks in Praça de São Paulo and Praça do Príncipe Real, with full expansion across the city planned for October.
A City Setting the Example
Lisbon backed the initiative with a municipal regulation banning single-use cups. To support the policy, TOMRA deployed its Rotake system to manage the full lifecycle of the cups – from tracking and collection to cleaning and reuse. The local hospitality association AHRESP also joined the effort, helping cafés, bars, and restaurants transition to a circular model.
