Hacker News Reader

The Pass Type ID certificate requires an Apple Developer Program membership which costs $99/year, but there are no additional fees specifically for Wallet pass functionality.

As far as I can tell, it’s included with the base product. But to keep it active you’d have to renew the developer subscription every year.

This is obnoxious given PKPass is an open standard. Third party apps can use them without any requirement to be verified by some authority, but Apple just has to maintain some sort of control.