Introduction
Push notifications for digital wallet passes offer a powerful way to engage with your customers directly on their mobile devices. While their primary purpose is to provide timely and relevant information related to the passes stored within them, they can also be strategically leveraged for marketing messages. However, it's crucial to understand the distinct approaches and guidelines of both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet to ensure your messages are effective and compliant.
General Principles for Wallet Push Notifications
For both platforms, relevance is key. Notifications should directly pertain to the pass itself.
This means updates to loyalty points, flight gate changes, expiring offers, or upcoming event reminders are typical and generally accepted use cases.
Remember that users always have the ability to control and disable notifications for Wallet passes. If notifications are perceived as spammy or irrelevant, users will likely turn them off, defeating any marketing purpose.
Both Apple and Google also have mechanisms to throttle or block notifications if they deem a provider is sending excessive or inappropriate messages.
Apple Wallet Push Notifications
Apple Wallet primarily triggers lock screen notifications based on specific criteria:
Value Changes: When a value on the pass changes (e.g., points balance, expiration date).
Contextual Relevance: When the user is in a relevant location (e.g., near a store for a loyalty card, for which you can set up to 10 relevant locations).
Apple has strict guidelines, emphasizing that notifications should not be used for unsolicited marketing.
The intent is for "change messages" that provide critical updates the user needs to know about.
While the Apple Pay mark can be used in marketing to promote Apple Pay as a payment option, direct marketing messages via Wallet pass push notifications are generally restricted.
If you are integrating Wallet passes with a dedicated app, Apple's push notification guidelines allow marketing or promotional notifications through your app, provided you obtain explicit user permission and offer a clear opt-out. These app-based notifications can then link to or direct users toward their Wallet passes.
Google Wallet Push Notifications and Messages
Google Wallet offers a bit more flexibility for sending marketing-related notifications compared to Apple Wallet, but it still operates within defined limits.
Google Wallet allows providers to send "messages" that can trigger a push notification. These notifications direct the user to the back of the pass where the message is highlighted.
These messages can include hyperlinks to websites or apps that are directly related to the pass.
To prevent spamming, Google enforces a limit: you can send a maximum of 3 messages that trigger a push notification within a 24-hour period. Exceeding this limit can lead to your notifications being throttled.
Google Wallet also supports triggering push notifications when specific fields within a pass change (e.g., a points balance crossing a threshold).
"Nearby Passes Notifications" can be triggered when a user approaches a designated point of interest.
Google is also actively developing "Value Added Opportunities" to integrate personalized modules directly into passes, showcasing deals, promotions, and additional services.
Google Wallet Messages: An Evolving Feature
It's important to note that Google Wallet's "Messages" functionality, which enables more dynamic and potentially marketing-oriented notifications, is still in its early stages of development and rollout.
Due to this, not all capabilities of Google Wallet Messages are currently exposed or configurable directly within the PassKit portal.
For now, triggering these specific Google Wallet Messages, particularly for marketing or promotional content beyond standard pass updates, generally requires direct interaction with the Google Wallet API.
We are actively working to integrate more of this functionality into the PassKit portal as Google's platform matures.
Conclusion
In summary, while both Apple and Google Wallet prioritize user experience and relevance, there are distinct differences in how their push notification features can be utilized for marketing. PassKit aims to provide you with the tools to leverage these powerful channels effectively, always advising adherence to platform guidelines to ensure high user engagement and avoid messaging limitations.