The leisure card in Oslo: how members pay their membership fee

The leisure card in Oslo: how the scheme works

The leisure card is Oslo Municipality’s support for children and young people who want to take part in organised leisure activities. The money goes to the family, who choose for themselves which activity provider they want to pay a membership fee or course fee to.

• Who: Children and young people aged 6 to 19, registered as resident in Oslo
• Income requirement: Total household income up to NOK 1,561,920 — the support is graded in three income bands
• Amount: NOK 1,100–1,650 per half-year for children aged 6–12, NOK 1,650–2,450 for young people aged 13–19, depending on income band
• Covers: Membership fees and course fees for activities lasting at least three months — within sport, culture and outdoor recreation — as well as participation fees for one-off events
• Does not cover: Training equipment, gyms, summer courses, language tuition, religious and political activities
• Platform: Friskus — oslo-fritidskort.friskus.com
• Application: Parents and guardians apply; young people over 15 can apply themselves

Note that the scheme also covers participation fees for one-off events — meets, tournaments, cups. It’s not just the annual membership fee. We’ll come back to why that matters.

Oslo isn’t alone. The scheme already exists in a number of other municipalities, and the vast majority use the same platform: Friskus. The setup you do now will therefore also work in other municipalities with the same scheme.

Three things the club must have in place

This is the part that actually causes errors in practice. Spend five minutes setting up the right structure.

1. Register the organisation with Oslo Municipality. All organisations that are to receive funds from the leisure card must be registered and approved by the municipality. If you’re not, you won’t show up when the family searches for an organiser in Friskus.

2. The account number must be identical. The account number you register in Friskus must be exactly the same as the one on the invoice from Rubic. If it isn’t, the bank rejects the payment — and the member gets an error message that’s impossible to interpret.

3. KID must be specified correctly. When the club is set up in Friskus, you tick the box to say that KID is required. From Rubic you can send invoices with KID. If this box isn’t ticked, the payment can’t be completed and will remain stuck in the system.

If you have these three under control, the rest takes care of itself.

How the member pays, step by step

The club sends the invoice from Rubic as usual — with account number and KID. The family takes it into Friskus and pays it from there.

1. Log in to the municipality’s leisure card page in Friskus.
2. Search for the organiser — that is, the club or association.
3. Choose to pay with the leisure card.
4. Check that the account number shown matches the one on the bill.
5. Enter the KID number from the invoice.
6. Enter the amount to be deducted from the leisure account. If the family has several children, each with their own card, the process is repeated with the same KID.
7. Pay the rest in online banking if the leisure card doesn’t cover the full amount.

The club receives the money as a completely ordinary payment with KID. No separate portal, no manual approval, no extra round of emails.

And just as important: the child notices nothing. The payment looks like any other payment. That’s one of the reasons the scheme is built the way it is — it shouldn’t put a label on anyone.

What it means for the treasurer

This is where the benefit lies that’s easy to overlook.

The alternative many clubs have lived with is that the municipality covers the membership fee retrospectively. The treasurer then has to keep track of who has been granted support, refrain from chasing those who shouldn’t really be chased, write documentation for the municipality and reconcile everything manually at the end. It’s a small side ledger that nobody has time for.

With the leisure card, the payment happens at the same time and in the same format as all other payments. It comes with KID, and in Rubic Betaling it is automatically matched to the right invoice and the right member. The accounts receivable ledger reconciles itself.

Soon it will also be easier to trace payments: clubs and associations will be able to log in to Friskus and see who has paid them — useful for double-checking that everything adds up, or finding out what happened if a payment has gone wrong.

It’s the same logic that underpins the rest of the payment flow in the membership system for sports clubs: OCR, eFaktura, AvtaleGiro and Vipps report back to the same accounts, so the treasurer doesn’t have to stitch together four sources to find out whether the membership fee has been paid.

Rubic is part of ECIT, with 3,500 colleagues in 11 countries. Clubs that want help with the accounting itself — not just the software — can get it from the same place.

This autumn: the leisure card directly in registration

Today, payment happens after the invoice has been sent. That works, but it’s one step too many when it comes to participation fees for events that require payment at registration — meets, tournaments, cups and training camps, where payment should ideally be in order the moment the team is registered.

That’s why, during autumn 2026, we are launching support for the leisure card directly in registration. The goal is for the leisure card to be a payment option on a par with card and Vipps at the moment the child is registered.

In practical terms, this means:

• The family chooses the leisure card in the registration form.
• The amount is deducted from the leisure account, and any remaining balance is paid with a regular payment method.
• The club sees the registration as completed and paid straight away.

We’ll come back with details and a date as the launch approaches.

In short

Oslo families with a leisure card can pay the club’s invoice with their card in Friskus. It requires no new module and no extra cost — only that the club is registered with the municipality, and that the account number and KID are set up correctly. This autumn the same option comes directly into registration, so that meets and cups can also be paid with the leisure card straight away.

Would you like to see what the payment flow looks like in practice? Book a demo — and we’ll go through the Friskus setup together with you.

Rubic is part of ECIT.