Hallo uit Nederland!

I’m currently on a trip through the Netherlands and Belgium using nothing but public transit. In fact, I haven’t set foot in a car since I was dropped off at the airport to board the first flight of my trip to Europe.

I plan to ramble on a bit about all the things I’ve learned so if you’re not interested in reading about the intricacies of the OV-chipkaart system, you should probably use the table of contents to skip around.

I’ve always loved riding the public transit in the Netherlands. On overnight layovers in Amsterdam going to and from Kazakhstan, my family would often take an NS train to Amsterdam Centraal, then a GVB tram towards the Vondelpark and the Museumkwartier in Amsterdam’s Oud-Zuid neighbourhood for the afternoon. This is not a post about past trips to the Netherlands, however. This is about writing down what I’ve learned about a system that will soon disappear (at least in its current form).

Basics

The OV-chipkaart is a contactless farecard system used by all public transit operators in the Netherlands. When first introduced it was based on the MIFARE Classic chips, before later moving to Infineon’s SLE 77 chip following the cracking of MIFARE’s encryption algorithm used on the Classic chips. The OV-chipkaart was introduced to replaced the older strippenkaart national fare system used by regional transit operators (like HTM, GVB, RET, Connexion, Arriva, etc.).

There are two types of OV-chipkaarts: the anonymous and the personal. The anonymous card can be purchased at most NS ticket machines and likely any staffed ticket counter for most operators. The personal card has to be requested from the OV-chipkaart network operators, but sometimes you can get one when buying a season ticket from a transit operator. These personal cards include your name and a photo, and can only be used by the person they are created for (of course).

The card works in two distinct ways: by using the stored value to pay the required fare (rekening op saldo), or by validating travel products which work in various ways (rekening met reisproducten). The travel products can be things like a season ticket or (multi)day ticket. There’s also travel products which can modify a trip on stored value, such as a temporary upgrade to 1st class, or the co-travel discount (called the samenreiskorting, though NS is doing away with this at the end of April of 2024).

NS Flex

A few years ago, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (commonly referred to as NS), the national rail company that operates most of the rail lines in the Netherlands, introduced NS Flex. NS Flex is a subscription product allowing you to ride NS trains and be billed for that month’s journeys through a bank draft every month. The service also works with local transit operators, meaning with NS Flex your rides on a tram, bus, or metro can also be post-paid. NS Flex subscriptions start at 0€ per month for the NS Flex Basic which does exactly everything I’ve already mentioned. Other NS Flex subscriptions can give you discounts for different times of travel (weekend, off-peak, and/or peak travel times) or even free travel for different time periods. For anyone not using NS Flex for commuting during rush-hour, the NS Flex Dal Voordeel plan is an amazing value. At 5.60€ per month, it gives a 40% discount for all train travel during off-peak hours and all day on weekends. In my experience, this will pretty much pay for itself a couple trips.¹

I found the idea of not having to constantly reload credit onto my transit card very appealing, especially since you have to have a minimum of 20€ on the card to check in for NS trains. A 40% discount on all off-peak and weekend train trips (which would be all of the trips I planned on taking) would also be a huge bonus. I decided to figure out how I, someone who (sadly) does not live in the Netherlands, could get this NS Flex plan for myself.

A slight roadblock

There is, of course, a catch to all of this. NS Flex can only be used in combination with a personal OV-chipkaart, which is not the easiest thing to get your hands on if you don’t live in the Netherlands, Belgium, or Germany. Requesting a personal OV-chipkaart through the OV-chipkaart website will only allow you to ship to one of those countries. There are ways you can get one of these made and shipped to you for a fee (I went this route, and while expensive, it’s always been a dream of mine to have one these so I’m content with the cost). If you’re interested in doing this, contact me and I can point you towards what I used (though at this point I wouldn’t recommend it since the OV-chipkaart is planning to retired in favour of a new OV-pas based around the new OVpay system).

Arguably a bigger roadblock

The more difficult problem to overcome is that NS Flex requires billing through a bank draft. More specifically, it only functions through SEPA Direct Debit, meaning you must have a European bank account that falls within the SEPA system. Actually, on the NS website there’s an (apparently) long-standing issue where you can only sign up for NS Flex online if your bank participates in iDEAL, which in practice is just Dutch banks.²

Thanks to the magic that is Eurpean Union law, since NS conducts these direct debits through SEPA, they are required to accept payment from any SEPA bank account. You just have to get in touch with NS customer support and they can get you signed up (I used the online chat). They will take your information and process the subscription for you manually. Once it’s set up, you can make any changes you want to the plan type through the Mijn NS website. All you need to know for the billing step is your account’s IBAN number.

If, like me, you did not already have a European bank account, a Wise account with a Euro wallet will work for this. You get a Belgian IBAN number this way.

What it’s like using this

After two weeks in the Netherlands, it’s been pretty great honestly. The ease of just tapping in and out but without have to worry about the balance on the card makes travel an absolute breeze. My wife, for comparison, had an anonymous card and definitely wished we didn’t have to keep stopping to top it up when it dipped down below 10€ (the minimum when travelling with the samenreiskorting).

I do wish that the trip charges showed up sooner in Mijn NS. In my experience, the train trips show up as “processing” the next day, with the final charges showing up a day or two after that. Trips with tram, bus, and metro operators showed up after 2-3 days. Maybe this is because I have the discount plan and it’s different with the basic NS Flex, but I doubt it. This might not be the way to go if transit budget is a concern, it can add up pretty fast without you realising.

The future

At the time of writing, the OV-chipkaart system is expected to disappear in 2025. The new OVpay system which allows you to pay with a contactless debit or credit card (or with Apple Pay and Google Wallet) is already accepted on all transit operators, so buying an anonymous OV-chipkaart to avoid buying single-use tickets (with their 1€ surcharge and all) as a tourist isn’t even necessary anymore. It is expected that the OV-chipkaart’s functions will be replaced by a new card (tentatively referred to as an OV-pas) which is claimed to be both a physical card, and a digital card you can keep on your smartphone. There are no details about this yet, so it’s hard to say what the future of NS Flex looks like in a post-chipkaart world. GVB, the transit operator for Amsterdam, now offers their version of the post-paid travel subscription through OVpay where it is tied to a debit or credit card. This requires that you first use that card with OVpay before it will be recognised by the system, though, which means that won’t work for visitors planning a trip.

I’m really curious to see how this will work in the future. I hope that I can move my NS Flex plan to the OV-chipkaart’s sucessor when that eventually launches so I can continue to use NS Flex for future visits to the Netherlands.

Tot ziens!