In the US we think of a phone card as giving us a toll-free access number where we can enter our card numbers and the number we wish to dial. The system is pre-paid. In Holland the pay phone system almost exclusively uses pre-paid smart cards. While embedded-chip smart cards have not yet been implemented in the United States, Europe has been an early adopter of the smart card technology. If you click anywhere in this link you will see a picture of a smart card.
To use pay phones in Holland, put your coins away. There are so few coin-operated pay phones that you should never depend on finding one. Instead, when you arrive and buy your train tickets or tram tickets, buy a phone card or two as well. The Train Tickets window in Schipol Airport and the VVV offices also at Schipol should selll two different types of phone cards. Again, because there are two companies that run proprietary pay phone systems in Holland.
The two pay phone companies are PTT and Telfort. PTT is the long-time government run phone company that is currently undergoing privatization pressures. It is like the old AT&T system in pre-Reagan-AT&T-breakup America, where all the pay phones worked. It's just that in the Dutch pay phone market, there is one other style of pay phone cards, the guys that have the train station pay phone contract, Telfort.is the name of that company.
You will find Telfort pay phones inside train stations, and you will find PTT phones everywhere else. This is a generalization, but it's also a good rule of thumb. I think once I found some PTT phones in the train station too, but don't expect it.
If you do not have a hotel room and a calling card then maybe you will be stuck using pay phones. My advice is to skip the Telfort cards, buy at least 25-50 guilders worth of PTT phone cards, and use the phones in the museums. The Rijksmuseum has a good pay phone area that is not too busy, and you should go there often anyways because the art is so great. I could spend 5 days in there, easily.