The blue plastic card everyone told you to buy is being withdrawn.
OV-chipkaart.nl now opens with the sentence De OV-chipkaart gaat stoppen, the anonymous cards are no longer being issued, and the whole system is due to be switched off during 2027.
If you have just arrived, do not buy one.
What replaced it is simpler than what it replaced.
You hold your contactless bank card against the pole by the tram door, hold it there again when you get off, and the money comes off your account the next day.
That is the entire system, and it is called OVpay.
The Netherlands was the first country to run this nationwide rather than in one city, and the volume is now enormous: more than 50 million card taps a week, and around a quarter of all public transport journeys paid for with a bank card.
It is the normal way to travel here, not the tourist workaround.
What you can tap
A contactless debit card, a Mastercard or Visa credit card, or a phone or watch running Apple Pay or Google Pay.
There is also an OV-pas, a plain travel card for people who would rather not put their bank card near a reader, and the old OV-chipkaart still works until it does not.
Two rules matter and both catch people out.
One card is one person: HTM puts it plainly, net zoals bij de OV-chipkaart is een pas het vervoerbewijs voor een persoon.
You cannot tap two of you through on the same card.
And you must check out with the card you checked in with, because a phone and the plastic card behind it read as two different travellers even when the bank account is the same.
How the fare is actually calculated
Every journey is a base fare plus a rate per kilometre, and the second number is set regionally rather than nationally.
For 2026 in the Haaglanden region, which is HTM’s trams and buses plus EBS, the figures are a base fare of 1.16 euro and 20.1 cents per kilometre at the full rate.
Reduced rate, which is what children and some pass holders pay, is 77 cents plus 13.3 cents per kilometre.
The metropolitan region set those in its 2026 tariff decision, applying the national tariff index of 3.86%.
Rotterdam’s rate is lower at 17.8 cents, which is why the same distance costs differently on either side of the regional boundary.
The practical version: a short hop across the centre is a little over two euro, and a run from Scheveningen to Delft is considerably more.
Nobody works this out in advance.
What is worth knowing is that the base fare applies per operator, so a journey that starts on a tram and continues on a train pays it twice.
Money leaving your account
Charges are bundled.
HTM’s own answer is that the cost of your journeys appears a day later as a single amount on your bank statement, which means the line on your app will not match any individual tram ride.
It shows up as NLOV followed by a fourteen digit code, and that code is what you feed into the travel overview on ovpay.nl if you want to see what it was made of.
Trains work slightly differently and this is the one genuine gotcha.
NS requires at least 20 euro of available balance on the account behind the card before it will let you check in.
A card that is fine for a tram can be refused at a station barrier on the morning you are catching a flight.
Forgetting to check out
You will do it.
The doors open, you are thinking about something else, and you walk off the tram with the journey still running.
HTM charges 4 euro per trip when the check is missing, debited automatically.
It is recoverable.
Log in to ovpay.nl or the OVpay app with your online banking, find the trip, and request the correction; HTM allows up to six months from the travel date, and the money comes back to your account within a few days.
Do it in one sitting for a month’s worth rather than each time, because the interface is built for exactly that.
If you still have an old OV-chipkaart, the equivalent site is uitcheckgemist.nl, which is a separate system with separate deadlines.
Discounts, and the one that is disappearing
Age discounts are not automatic when you tap a bank card.
You have to register the card with OVpay, through the app or the website, and link it to your date of birth.
Until you do, a twelve year old pays the adult rate.
Note one change that is already announced: the age discount for over 65s ends on 1 January 2027.
If that is your household, plan for it rather than discovering it.
Beyond that, HTM sells a 20% discount pass for 5 euro, and a range of regional monthly passes running from 63 euro for one zone to 304 euro for six at 2026 full rates, with a yearly version at ten times the monthly price.
There are cheaper reduced rates for under 18s.
If you commute daily on the same corridor, the arithmetic usually favours a pass; if you travel three times a week, it does not.
Single tickets, for visitors and for when the card fails
HTM’s paper and app tickets for 2026 are 4.85 euro for two hours, 8.60 euro for a day, and 22 euro for three days.
A children’s day ticket is 1.50 euro, the night bus ticket is 6.50 euro, and the Haagse Hopper, which is the little service around the centre, is 1.55 euro or 1.05 euro for seniors.
Those are worth knowing when people visit.
For a family spending a Saturday going out to the coast and back with a stop in town, day tickets beat tapping, and a 1.50 euro children’s ticket beats anything.
Closing the old card
If you inherited an OV-chipkaart from a previous tenant or bought one on arrival, there is money on it and it is yours.
A personal card can be refunded and terminated through the ov-chipkaart.nl account it is registered to.
An anonymous card cannot be refunded to a named person in the same way, so the sane approach is to spend the balance down before the system closes.
Everything else about arriving here has a queue, a form or an appointment attached.
This one does not: the card in your wallet already works, and the only setup worth doing in advance is registering it on OVpay if anyone in the household is entitled to a discount.
It sits oddly alongside DigiD and the BSN, which are neither of them quick.
Two other things follow from having a tappable card.
Parking a car in this city is expensive enough that the tram wins on most journeys inside the ring, and the bike, which is the real competition, has its own economics set out in what a bike costs and what a lock costs.
Sources
- OV-chipkaart.nl homepage: “De OV-chipkaart gaat stoppen”, the switch to OVpay, and more than 3 million people already moved across; uitcheckgemist.nl for missed checks on the old card
- MRDH, Tarieven openbaar vervoer 2026 vastgesteld: kilometre rate for Haaglanden (HTM and EBS) rising to 20.1 eurocent in 2026, Rotterdam and Voorne-Putten to 17.8 eurocent, national tariff index of 3.86%
- HTM, Fares and subscriptions 2026: base fare 1.16 euro full rate and 0.77 euro reduced, 0.201 euro and 0.133 euro per kilometre, 4.00 euro for a missed check-in or check-out, 2 hour ticket 4.85 euro, day ticket 8.60 euro, 3 day ticket 22.00 euro, children’s day ticket 1.50 euro, night bus 6.50 euro, Haagse Hopper 1.55 euro and 1.05 euro for seniors, 20% discount pass 5.00 euro, regional monthly passes from 63 to 304 euro
- HTM, OVpay veelgestelde vragen: one card is one person, check in and out with the same card, the same tariffs as the OV-chipkaart, and the day’s journeys appearing as one amount on the bank statement
- HTM, OVpay uitcheck gemist: 4 euro per trip debited automatically, correction through ovpay.nl or the OVpay app, refund within a few days, six months to make the correction
- HTM, OVpay product page: age discount available after registering through the OVpay app or ovpay.nl, and the 65 plus age discount ending on 1 January 2027
- NS, travelling and paying with your debit card: a minimum of 20 euro available on the account before a train check-in is permitted, and the NLOV reference with the fourteen digit code on the bank statement
- Mastercard and Dutch public transport operators, OVpay rollout: nationwide open-loop launch in June 2023, over 50 million bank card taps per week, around a quarter of all journeys paid by bank card
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