Checking in at public transport without a public transport chip card? It is now also possible with your bank card
It may have happened to you before: you find out that you forgot your public transport chip card, just before you want to catch the train or bus. Fortunately, since June this year it is possible to check in everywhere in the Netherlands with a bank card. So you don’t have to worry if you have forgotten your public transport chip card or have not charged it. Moreover, there are future plans for a public transport pass for your telephone, with the aim of completely replacing the public transport chip card.
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Checking in with a credit or debit card: Lelystad as a first
Since 2019, the government has been digitizing the public transport chip card. Starting with sixteen Arriva buses in Lelystad, to a national way of checking in public transport. The chip card as we know it is relatively inconvenient to use and has security problems. Checking in with a debit card should make it easier and cheaper to travel to different places throughout the Netherlands.
OVpay: the way of payment
Various transport companies are working together to make it possible to pay with a bank card, also known as OVpay. You can check in and out in exactly the same way, only with a debit card or mobile phone. This is only possible if you travel without a discount or subscription, but this will change. If you want to know how much your trip has cost, you can see this in your statements with the description NLOV. As far as we are concerned, a convenient way to travel.
What are the next steps?
This new system of traveling by public transport has been possible throughout the Netherlands since 2023. More than 60,000 access gates and card readers have been replaced at various stations in the country. According to the State Secretary, the plan for the future is clear: the public transport chip card must be replaced by the public transport pass. The public transport pass will initially be available both physically and digitally. This digital variant will be offered in the form of a kind of wallet (wallet) and with this it is possible to check in via your phone. However, little is known about exactly what this will look like. The intention is that the physical card to check in with will disappear completely in 2025.
What are the consequences?
For a large part of the Netherlands it might be nice to be able to check in via your phone. After all, we use our phones for almost everything these days. However, there are still some questions about the public transport pass. Now most people have different subscriptions that make it possible to travel by public transport. When it is possible to use the public transport pass, these subscriptions will be transferred. Starting with the simple subscriptions, later the more complex subscriptions will follow. It is not yet clear whether this will have substantive consequences for the current subscriptions.
It is also the intention that anonymous travel remains an option. This can be quite a difficult task, because the new public transport pass is directly linked to a person. So it remains to be seen how this will be implemented in the new public transport pass.
