Why your loyalty card belongs in Apple Wallet
· By Sakib Abbas · 3 min read · Reviewed
Every app you ask a customer to download is a door they have to walk through. Wallet passes remove the door entirely.
There are really only three places a loyalty card can live: a piece of cardboard in someone's wallet, an app on their phone, or their phone's built-in wallet. Each one asks something different of the customer, and that ask is what decides whether the programme works.
The problem with paper
Paper cards are cheap and everyone understands them, which is exactly why they persist. But they get lost, they go through the wash, and you have no idea who holds one. When a card disappears so does the relationship — you cannot message someone whose card is at the bottom of a bag, because you never knew who they were.
The problem with apps
An app fixes the data problem and creates a worse one. You are asking someone standing at your counter, holding a coffee, to find your app in a store, download it, create an account, verify an email and choose a password. Most people will not do that for a free drink eight visits from now, and the ones who do will delete it within a month.
Every extra step between the counter and the card is a place people stop.
Why the wallet wins
Apple Wallet and Google Pay are already on the phone, already trusted, and already where people keep boarding passes and tickets. Adding a card is one tap from a link. No download, no account, no password to forget.
It also solves the thing paper never could: the card updates itself. When staff scan it, the stamp count on the customer's phone changes without them doing anything. They can glance at it in the queue and see they are two away from a free one — which is precisely the moment a loyalty card does its job.
And it is genuinely yours
A wallet pass carries your logo, your colours and your name. It is not a listing inside somebody else's rewards app next to your competitors. When a customer opens their wallet, they see your shop.