Passengers travelling on rail services in the Netherlands can now pay for full-fare second-class train fares with their physical or digital debit or credit card by tapping a reader at the beginning and end of their journey.

Dutch rail operator NS has launched the contactless open loop fare payments system as part of its OVpay service — which also supports OV transit card payments and mobile ticketing — in “most of the Netherlands” and expects it to be fully live across the whole country “at the end of March”.

“In addition to NS, travelling with your debit card is also possible from 31 January on the trains of Qbuzz (Merwedelijn) and Arriva (Limburg),” NS says.

NS announced plans to trial the system in August 2022 and says that it “has learned from this pilot and has improved the technology to make the process as easy as possible for passengers”.

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