Note: This article was originally published in 2022 and has been updated in 2026.

Meetse, aboDeinauto, and myTIER are all mobility service providers and some of the early customers of circuly who used circuly to manage their subscription operations while they were live and running.

As of 2026, all three have discontinued their subscription businesses:

• TIER was acquired by Dott and the myTIER subscription line was discontinued as part of the strategic changes that followed.
• Meetse's parent company decided to discontinue the project.
• aboDeinauto was venture-backed, lost investor funding, and is currently in liquidation.

In this article we retrospectively look at what subscription operations looked like for each provider: the challenges they were solving, how they used circuly, and what worked.

If you're looking for active case studies from mobility and bike subscription companies currently running on circuly, see how Decathlon, Riese & Müller, Bike Club, Moover, Tenways, Joule, and Nearbyk manage their subscription operations today.

TIER Mobility

TIER launched in 2018 and grew quickly into one of the most recognisable names in last-mile mobility in Europe.

Their core business was shared e-mobility — the on-demand model — but in 2021 they entered the subscription space, launching a monthly subscription service for e-scooters and mopeds in selected locations under the myTIER brand.

The decision to launch subscriptions was investor-driven as much as customer-driven. Monthly recurring revenue signals stability and predictability in a way that on-demand usage revenue does not — for investors, for forecasting, and for building a business with more durable unit economics.

Subscription infrastructure: Shopify + Adyen

What TIER needed from circuly

#1 — A dedicated return handling process

In a physical product subscription, the product comes back to the vendor at the end of each subscription period. For TIER, this meant scooters and mopeds returning in varying conditions, needing inspection, potential repair, and redeployment into available inventory. The profit potential of any given asset is directly tied to how many subscription cycles it can complete — which means a slow or broken return process directly affects revenue.

Without a system, returned products sit in limbo. No one has a clear picture of what's come back, when, or in what state.

With circuly's digital return and repair feature, TIER could track every return, log repair requirements and associated costs, and push products back into stock automatically — keeping the subscription cycle moving without manual intervention.

#2 — Complete asset history

TIER wanted a 360-degree view of every scooter in their fleet. Which customer had it, how many rental cycles it had completed, what repairs it had gone through, what those repairs cost, and where it was at any given moment — with the customer, in stock, in repair, or written off.

Tracking that in spreadsheets becomes untenable at scale. With circuly's asset tracking, every product had a complete, automatically maintained history. No manual data entry. Everything accessible in one place, with the commercial KPIs built in.

#3 — The ability to swap products

Physical products break. TIER needed a way to replace a subscriber's broken scooter without disrupting the subscription or creating friction for the customer. That meant pausing billing for the period the product was unusable, issuing a replacement, and keeping a clean record of which product was swapped for what and when.

With circuly's product swap feature, TIER could handle substitutions without touching the underlying subscription structure — pausing and resuming payments, updating product attribution, and maintaining a full audit trail at the asset level.

"If we didn't have circuly, we would have to build something like circuly ourselves. With circuly, you don't need 100 people in customer care to manage a subscription business — you can keep it very cost-efficient. For us, circuly was the most cost-efficient way to launch and operate our subscription business."— myTIER

On TIER's current status: TIER was acquired and the myTIER subscription product was discontinued as part of the strategic changes following acquisition. The decision had nothing to do with subscription operations or the infrastructure supporting them.

aboDeinauto

aboDeinauto was founded in 2020 by a team of industry specialists and serial founders with a clear proposition: make car subscriptions simple and flexible, bundled into a single all-inclusive monthly price. They already had an existing subscription business model when they came to circuly — the challenge was operational complexity and a checkout experience that wasn't converting the way it should.

Subscription infrastructure: Saleor + Stripe

What aboDeinauto needed from circuly

#1 — One-time payments alongside recurring billing

Car subscriptions don't stop at the monthly fee. Speeding tickets, damage charges, additional repair costs, and entry fees are a regular part of operations. aboDeinauto needed to charge customers for these without creating manual payment requests or chasing individual responses.

With circuly's one-time transaction feature, they could charge the saved payment method directly with a few clicks, with automated invoicing and communication handled by the platform — removing the manual overhead from a process that comes up constantly.

#2 — Flexible discounts and vouchers

Subscription payment logic is different from standard e-commerce. A discount that applies to the first payment only behaves differently from one that runs across all recurring payments. A voucher valid for rentals shouldn't automatically apply to a purchase. aboDeinauto needed full control over how promotional codes behaved — by product, by payment type, by customer segment.

circuly let them create voucher codes with granular rules: which products they applied to, whether they covered recurring payments or initial payments only, and when they expired. That level of customisation is what distinguishes a real subscription billing layer from a basic payment tool.

#3 — Changing recurring payment amounts

Standard PSPs collect recurring payments well. Changing them — adjusting the amount mid-subscription, reflecting a damage charge or pricing update — is typically outside what most payment providers handle. aboDeinauto needed the flexibility to alter payment amounts on a per-subscription basis without having to rebuild the subscription or contact the customer.

circuly's recurring payment management gave them that control, with automated communication to customers whenever an amount changed. For more on how circuly extends what PSPs like Stripe can do for subscription businesses, see how circuly makes recurring payments with PSPs better.

#4 — Integration with their existing tech stack

aboDeinauto had already built a custom SCHUFA integration for credit checks — a critical part of their checkout flow for car subscriptions. They needed a subscription platform that could sit alongside that, not replace it.

Because circuly is fully API-driven, it connects to any shop system and PSP without requiring a rebuild of the surrounding infrastructure. Their existing tools stayed in place. circuly slotted in as the subscription management layer on top.

"With circuly, we are able to run our complex subscription model smoothly while staying flexible in our choice of CMS. Its simple plug-and-play solution and integration helped us to quickly introduce a new checkout experience to our customers, easily managed by us."— Victor de Maziere, Operations at aboDeinauto

On aboDeinauto's current status: aboDeinauto was venture-backed. Investors withdrew funding and the company entered liquidation in 2026. The subscription model and operational infrastructure were not factors in that outcome.

Meetse

Meetse offered an e-bike subscription service and was among the early movers in the micromobility subscription space. Their decision to use circuly came down to what most early-stage subscription businesses need most: a way to launch professionally without building everything from scratch.

"We chose circuly for our e-bike subscription because it was the easiest way to professionally launch a subscription model."— Nele Waltner, Project Lead at Meetse

That ease of launch matters more than it might seem. Building a subscription management system in-house — one that handles recurring billing, return logistics, asset tracking, customer communication, and PSP integration — is a significant engineering investment. For a company whose core competency is running an e-bike service, not building billing infrastructure, that investment competes directly with product and operations. circuly removes it from the equation.

On Meetse's current status: Meetse's parent company made the decision to discontinue the project. The subscription operations ran without issue up until that point.

What these cases still teach us

Three companies, three different vehicle types, three different reasons for eventually closing — but one consistent thread: when the subscription infrastructure was right, the operations worked.

TIER could run a lean subscription service without building an in-house customer operations team. aboDeinauto could manage a complex car subscription with custom integrations, damage charging, and flexible pricing without cobbling together multiple tools. Meetse could launch a professional e-bike subscription without the engineering overhead of building the underlying platform.

The mobility subscription market is larger and more mature than it was when these businesses launched. The case for mobility-as-a-service as a business model has only strengthened. New players — in e-bikes, cargo bikes, e-scooters, and cars — are actively building subscription lines today. The challenges they face are the same ones TIER, aboDeinauto, and Meetse faced first: how to manage returns at scale, how to keep asset data clean, how to handle flexible billing, how to give customers a checkout experience that converts.

The subscription management infrastructure for physical products required to run these models well is specialised. General e-commerce platforms and standard PSPs don't cover it. That gap is precisely what circuly is built for.

If you're in mobility and exploring what a subscription offering could look like operationally, how circuly works for subscription businesses is a good starting point. And if bikes specifically are your focus, the full picture of how bike subscription models work — and why more manufacturers and retailers are adopting them covers the current landscape in detail.