train tickets in Nederlands

Don't read old travel guides given how technology changes. I have been going to Amsterdam since 2001 and it has never been hard to buy tickets. Since around the early part of the last decade 2010 to present you can buy tickets online anywhere with wifi connection or on your phone using the hotel wifi. And you can still buy them with a live person at most stations. However it has still been my experience that the machine kiosk may not work with a USA issued credit card.

No, not true. The ticket machines were fairly picky about wanting a credit card with a PIN at one time, but you could always walk to the manned window and purchase a ticket. There are also machines that are only for topping up a travel card (or were) which confused some travelers.

If you have a chipped credit card, I would try it, they raised the limit for transactions without PIN verification during the pandemic, and some machines may also have been converted to touchless by now. However, the last time I was there (November) I used the NS App on my phone exclusively.

Please throw away your old guidebook and get a new one. If your book still mentions you can’t pay with foreign credit cards it’s a very old one and it’s very likely that other information in the book will also be outdated.
At a train station there are several types of ticket machines, the one you need has a blue illuminated sign with the NS logo at the top of the machine. This ticket machine accepts Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards as well as coins.
However you can save €1 on each ticket by buying your ticket online or in the NS app. See here for details; https://www.ns.nl/en/travel-information/ns-on-your-mobile

Dutch_traveler, can I get your opinion please? I've been reading about the OV-chipkaart for my upcoming trip, but my husband's research suggests it might be easier/simpler for us to just buy tickets on the app as needed. That way we don't have to worry about keeping the minimum €20 on the card. Now I'm thinking if we can use a US card in the app (I can't imagine that we can't), the app would be the simplest way to go. We'd be using the tram a few times in Amsterdam, and trains the rest of the time in other cities.

@Roubrat; I agree that the app seems to be the most convenient for you. You can pay using Visa, MasterCard and American Express. The OV-chipkaart may also work, but there are some downsides. An ov-chipkaart costs €7,50 and you will need to make sure you always have sufficient balance. If you have balance remaining when you leave, you can go to the NS desks at Schiphol to have this balance paid out to you, but the cost of the card won’t be refunded.

Also, you may already be aware, but the trams in Amsterdam are operated by a company called GVB, whereas the trains in the Netherlands are operated by NS. You can’t buy tickets for the GVB trams in the NS app.

Thank you! We already have the GVB app ready to go too.

This might be a silly question, but when buying a ticket on the app, is there a QR code or something that we will need to scan?

If you buy tickets on the website or in the app, you will receive a ticket with a QRcode. You use this QR-code to open the gates by scanning the code on the reader. Make sure to pick a gate with a reader that looks like a glass plate. Some gates have a different type of reader that can only read a chip. At each train station with gates, there will always be several gates with this glass plate to read the QR-code.
If you buy a ticket at the station from a ticket machine or from the desk, your ticket will come in the form of a disposable paper chipkaart. If you use that ticket or if you use the OV-chipkaart, you open the gates to the train station by tapping your card on the reader. In that case if doesn’t matter what type of scanner you use. Both types of scanner can read chips.
The website of the Dutch railway company explains all this pretty well on their website; https://www.ns.nl/en/travel-information/traveling-with-the-ov-chipkaart/checking-in-and-out-at-the-gates-and-poles.html

We are here now. We used the Iamsterdam digital card for travel within Amsterdam and anonymous OV chipkaarts for travel all around outside of Amsterdam. It’s been working great for us. A car maybe would have been easier at some points but we committed to travel this way as part of the experience. We bought the cards at a counter at the train station by the airport and have refilled them at machines as needed.

Thanks again, Dutch_traveler. Very helpful!

We are traveling to Amsterdam Schiphol this month. We need to get to our hotel, need to be able to access trams and buses and then get to Ghent on Wednesday to start an RS tour. Should we get the Amsterdam Travel Ticket mentioned in the RS guidebook and would that be enough, are there other options that are better? It seems from this thread that there may be. Thanks!

@gsrhn; there is no one size fits all solution. Without any information about where your hotel is, how many days you’re in Amsterdam and what you plan to see and do it’s impossible to give you advice. If you stay in central Amsterdam you may not even need to take trams and busses, you can do everything on foot.
For your train trip to Belgium, you need to buy an international train ticket. No pass will include that journey.

Thank you so much for the quick reply. We are staying in west Amsterdam on Herengracht and my husband has some walking issues so we expect to need the transportation. We have timed tx to the Van Gogh museum the day after we arrive and will need to get to the train station for the trip to Ghent for the start of our tour. I think the iAmsterdam City card is not a good value for us this trip. But it sounds like the GVB or Amsterdam Travel ticket may be. I would prefer to do it as a card, not on the phone unless that proves difficult. We will be in the city most of 2 days and a small part of a third. Am I on the right track....literally!?