iOS 27: Custom Wallet Passes
Alen Todorov (via Hacker News, MacRumors):
After 14 years of waiting on developers to ship Wallet support, Apple is letting users do it themselves. Here is what Bloomberg is reporting, how the new flow works, and what it means for third-party tools like WalletWallet.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on Monday that iOS 27 will add a “Create a Pass” feature to the Wallet app. Tap the “+” button you already use to add credit cards or pass emails, and Wallet will offer something it has never offered before on iPhone: a path to build your own pass.
You can scan a QR code on a paper ticket or membership card with the camera, or build a pass from scratch in a layout editor. The whole flow runs without an Apple Developer account, a Pass Type ID, or any certificate signing.
[…]
Apple shipped PassKit alongside iOS 6 back in 2012. The pitch was clean: businesses build .pkpass files, customers tap to add, everyone wins. In practice, the consistent adopters ended up being airlines, big-box retailers, ticketing platforms, and a handful of national chains. Most gyms, cafes, libraries, rec centers, and small loyalty programs never built one, because the path requires an Apple Developer account, signing certificates, and enough engineering work that “just print a paper card” almost always won the budget conversation.
This seems like it should have been a day one feature except that perhaps Apple worried that it would disincentivize developers from adopting PassKit. Instead, people created Photos albums with pictures of bar codes.
noio:
15 years ago, a friend of mine built an app to do this — “Pass Creator” — then Apple yanked the functionality.
The wallet app UI is the peak of Apple’s ‘single 20y/o in sf’ design.
Anyone that has multiple card from the same bank (because, say, you have a personal account and a shared account with your partner) has to do the “pick between the two identical looking top 20px of cards” dance every time they use Wallet to pay for something. It is mind-boggling that the current UI persists.
I wish Wallet supported search while in Apple Pay mode and a way to add your own notes/comments to each card.
Previously:
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I hope I'll some point Apple will tie in location awareness: enter the address of the business and the pass will show up on top of the list when you are there…
Even better: map the business name to the location (but that would require Map to actually be up to date with business addresses :-> )
That functionality already exists- I have several passes that are location-aware and pop up on my lock screen when I arrive. Of course, in modern iOS fashion, it doesn't reliably work, but when it does it's pretty cool.
I really haven't seen this discussed anywhere, but whatever they did to the UI/UX in the Wallet app with iOS 26 is atrocious over what it was in the previous version. It takes more taps to do things than it used to. Immediate downgrade.
Corentin, even better, take location awareness a step further and optionally offer the credit card that gives the most cash back at that location.
To be fair, if you have two of the same credit card from the same bank, you’re gonna have the same problem in your physical wallet.
Try opening the wallet, press and hold a card to rearrange the position to opposite ends of your card stack, just like you’d do in a physical wallet.
Just because something is confusing in a regular wallet, with physical restrictions, doesn't mean we should copy those restrictions to a digital wallet.
"To be fair, if you have two of the same credit card from the same bank, you’re gonna have the same problem in your physical wallet."
In the real world, you can do this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=credit+card+skin
@Stewart: I was talking about the new custom Wallet passes. I hope they'll allow us to tie in location awareness to the custom passes the way it is possible for the current supported passes.
I wonder if the fact that I only have one card (and a debit card at that) is a sign of success or failure.
As for loyalty cards they are either tied to my debit card or my drivers license.
Unfortunately it won’t work for Costco, one of the biggest holdouts. Their QR codes have a time-sensitive component.
Yes, we should mimic everything a physical wallet does.
Have a max number of cards unless you get the iPhone Pro which can store more cards.
Have the cards change order to your most-recently used in front, so that the cards are always mixed up.
Maybe you need to swipe your phone through a slot, too.
"Yes, we should mimic everything a physical wallet does."
Please point to the exact location where somebody said that.
@Nate: what does Costco use QR codes for? I have a bar code on a physical card that I scan. I assure you, that isn’t changing on any kind of regular basis.
I've been using an app called "Pass2U Wallet" to do this for many years. It's a bit clunky but it does the job.
