The following article outlines the key stages to help you maximize the benefits of passes and the PassKit platform. Quickly learn the essentials of offering passes in your customers' Wallet apps; from seamless distribution and real-time update to best practices for creating a standout user experience.

The PassKit Help Center provides in-depth, step-by-step guidance for each of these stages, ensuring you have the tools and knowledge to succeed. Whether you’re designing your first pass, integrating with your existing systems, or troubleshooting an issue, the Help Centre is your ultimate go-to resource.

If you get stuck at any point, you can:

At PassKit, we’re here to support your success. For more information on how we help you achieve your goals, check out our article on How We Support You.

Apple Wallet is natively iinstalled and available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple Watch. Google Wallet is available on the Google Play store and can be installed on all Android Phones and Wear OS devices (Lollipop 5.0+).

These Wallet apps allows users to easily manage payment cards, boarding passes, tickets, gift cards, and other passes. Apple Wallet is time and location enabled, so passes can be configured to display on the user’s device at the appropriate moment, like when the user reaches the airport or walks into a store. Passes can also be updated with push notifications so, if details change, you can notify the user and they can simply tap the notification to view the updated pass.

You design a pass using the PassKit Portal or the PassKit API. Start by choosing a style—boarding pass, coupon, event ticket, membership card, or loyalty card. The style determines how the pass looks and the details it displays, including the time window and location radius for relevance. For example, the relevant time for a boarding pass differs from that of a movie ticket, so choosing the correct style is crucial.

Personalize your passes with your logo, images, text, and links. While you have some flexibility in deciding where certain fields appear, the fonts, formatting, and layout are determined by Apple and Google. This means you can’t change the font type, style, or the position of your logo, image, or barcode.

Ensure your passes are clear, optimized, and visually appealing across all devices.

Once your pass is designed, you can optionally integrate it with your other systems and applications using the PassKit API, Zapier or using the integrations available in the PassKit Portal.

This ensures your passes stay synchronized with customer data stored in other databases. For example, you might connect your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system or POS (Point of Sale) software with PassKit.

Thoroughly test your integrations to ensure data flows between systems as expected before distributing passes.

Getting passes into Wallet is simple. You can distribute them through your app, email, messaging apps, the web, or even by scanning a QR code. Users can add a pass without installing a related app or add a pass that doesn’t have a related app at all. If there is an app and the user doesn’t have it installed, they can install it directly from the pass. iCloud pushes passes to all of a user’s devices.

PassKit automatically detects the device and presents the correct pass type with the appropriate "Add to Wallet" badge

You can update the pass from using the PassKit Portal or automatically when data changes in your other applications, using the integrations you implemented.

Passes will be updated by using push notifications or the pull-to-refresh gesture on the back of a pass. This allows you to notify users of important updates, such as a gate change at the airport, a coupon expiry update, or a loyalty points balance adjustment.

Users access their passes in their Wallet app. For Apple Wallet users, Passes can display on the Lock Screen at the right time, like when the user reaches the airport or enter a store.

Passes can work with Near Field Communication (NFC) readers for contactless redemption. Users simply hold their device near a reader with contactless symbol to use a pass, with no need for a barcode.

If you're developing an NFC-enabled pass to use with Apple Pay, you'll need to request an NFC certificate. Additionally, there are strict requirements for implementing NFC passes. For more details, see Enabling and Using NFC Passes.

Passes can contain barcodes that are scanned in order to obtain information stored in the pass. Wallet supports barcodes using QR, Aztec, PDF417 and Code128 formats.

Wallet optimizes pass presentation to ensure successful scans. For example, the screen locks to portrait orientation, and the backlight temporarily boosts to the brightest setting. However, it’s important to test your passes with the hardware you plan to use for scanning. Optical scanners work better for iPhone screens than laser scanners.

If you are not integrating with scanning hardware you can use the PassKit PassReader app to scan your passes. For more details, see the Scanning Passes instructions.

For coupons, a user can click on a link on the pass to redeem the offer. This is known as Customer Initiated Redemption (CIR). For more details, see digital coupons without POS integration.

Passes can also display text below the barcode to show the user's membership or account number in case scanning is unavailable.