Contactless in Amsterdam

Yes, and you almost certainly already have the ticket. The scheme is OVpay: your own contactless bank card, phone or watch pays directly, with nothing to buy first and no balance to keep topped up. Visa, Mastercard, Maestro and V Pay are the accepted schemes, in plastic or in a wallet; American Express is not among them.

Every reader here is a two-tap reader. Touch in when you board and touch out when you get off — on GVB's metro, trams and buses, on NS trains, on Connexxion's buses south of the city and on EBS's buses to the north — and use the same card or device at both ends, because a check-out that does not match its check-in does not close the journey. On those services the fare is worked out from how far you went; GVB's night buses and Connexxion's Amsterdam Airport Express each charge a flat fare of their own instead. Missing the check-out costs money: €4 on a GVB tram, bus or metro, the €6.00 boarding hold on an EBS bus, and on NS a flat correction charge in place of the real fare, which NS will refund the difference on if you ask through OVpay.nl between 6 and 60 days after you travelled, up to three corrections a year.

Two places will not take a tap, for opposite reasons. Arriva's night trains between Schiphol and Amsterdam Centraal take no bank card at all; that ticket is bought beforehand in the glimble app or the 9292 app, which gives you a QR code that opens the gates. The IJ ferries behind Centraal — F1 to F7 and F9 — are free for pedestrians and cyclists: no ticket of any kind is needed and none is sold. Everywhere else it is the same three things — tap on, tap off, same card.

Yes. The metro is GVB's, and a contactless bank card, phone or watch pays for it under OVpay — Visa, Mastercard, Maestro or V Pay, physical or in a wallet, with American Express the one common scheme not accepted. There is nothing to buy beforehand and no balance to load; what you spend is billed to your bank account the day after you travel.

Touch the gateline reader on the way in and again on the way out, with the same card or device both times. The fare is worked out from the distance you covered, so the check-out is what tells the system where you got off: miss it and you are charged the full €4 boarding fare instead, and that charge counts towards nothing. It can be put right afterwards through uitcheckgemist.nl, the official channel for a missed check-out — claim it there rather than writing the €4 off.

Stay on one card all day and the metro, tram and bus travel it pays for stops charging at €10.50 under GVB Max, which there is nothing to join. Mixing a phone and a plastic card during the day breaks that, so pick one and tap it every time.

Yes, on every bus in and around Amsterdam — but a bus here is a two-tap ride, not a one-tap one. Hold your contactless bank card, phone or watch to the reader as you board, and hold the same one there again as you get off. Visa, Mastercard, Maestro and V Pay are accepted; American Express is not.

Who is carrying you decides what the taps cost. On GVB's own city buses the fare goes by distance, and forgetting to check out costs you the full €4 boarding fare. GVB's night buses take the same tap but charge a flat night fare, and they sit outside GVB's €10.50 daily cap. Connexxion's buses south of the city, around Amstelveen, Aalsmeer and Uithoorn, also go by distance, and a missed check-out there is charged as a correction equal to the boarding fare, which you can put right yourself in your OVpay account or through uitcheckgemist.nl afterwards. EBS runs the buses north into Zaanstreek-Waterland, including routes 100, 104 and 112 to Amsterdam Noord; distance again, but a missed check-out there keeps the whole €6.00 boarding hold.

One bus is priced apart from all of that. Connexxion's Amsterdam Airport Express, bus 397, and the N97 Niteliner overnight take a contactless tap but charge their own flat fare — €6.50 single, €11.75 return — rather than the ordinary tariff. Whichever bus you are on, the tap that people forget is the second one: check out as you step off.