How to put a pass in Apple and Google Wallet, no app required

The most valuable spot on your customer’s phone is not your app. It is Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, the place they keep their boarding passes and debit card and open without thinking. A pass that lives there is a pass they keep. Here is how to get your store credit, points, and vouchers into it, on both iPhone and Android, with no app and nothing to switch on.

What can go in the native wallet

Not everything belongs on a pass, so it helps to know the split. The essentials that suit Apple and Google Wallet add cleanly:

• Store credit. A balance the customer can carry and see.
• A points or membership card. Their standing with you, in the wallet they already open.
• A voucher. A gift or promo they redeem in person.

The richer parts of a program, time-limited offers and membership tiers, live in the branded wallet the customer opens straight from a link with no app. In practice a business gets both: the everyday card in the phone’s native wallet, and the full experience a tap away.

How a customer adds one

For the customer, it takes a few seconds and no account:

1. Find an Add to Apple Wallet button (iPhone) or Save to Google Wallet button (Android), on your site, email, text, or a QR code.
2. Tap it.
3. Confirm, and the pass drops into the phone’s wallet next to the debit card.

There is no app to install first and no password to create.

It works on both phones, out of the box

Two things make this simple for a business. First, it is cross-platform: Apple Wallet covers iPhone and Google Wallet covers Android, and both are live, so you reach every customer regardless of phone. Second, it is on by default. Passes are enabled out of the box, so there is nothing to configure before a customer can add one. You brand it once and it is ready.

Why the pass is the one they keep

A pass in Apple or Google Wallet is not a screenshot to dig out of a photo roll. It is a real pass that sits in the wallet the customer never clears out, so it is there the moment they need it, with no app to open first. That is the difference between a card a customer forgets and one they use, and it is why “in the wallet” beats “in an app that gets deleted” every time.

Where this fits

Putting a card in the native wallet is the Member stage of the customer lifecycle, the point where a repeat customer becomes a recognized regular. For the loyalty-specific version of this, see loyalty cards in Apple and Google Wallet; for the bigger picture of why the phone’s wallet beats a website, see what a mobile wallet does that a website can’t.

Want to see your brand’s pass in the wallet? Take a look.