iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet
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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.
An 80 year old with early onset challenges can work this wallet, pick a card, and then hold the phone to the reader at a store. It's all co-opting "familiar" actions for them, not tech-like, which means they can do it.
The biggest UX issue Apple has for that persona isn't the wallet, it's the lack of physical home button. Everyone in their 70s and up seems to be given pause every time they aren't on the screen they expect, and even to unlock it.
Invisible affordances rely on memory rather than sight trigger: not good.
Not at all.
In my physical wallet, those identical looking cards have different names on them, ie. <myfirstname mylastname> and <mylastname - partnerslastname> for joint accounts. I can also mark them up with a marker, or request a different picture from some banks.
In iOS I need to remember that the one ending with 0044 is mine, and 0073 is for our joint account. I have no way to add an alias or distinguish them otherwise. This is ridiculous.
Seeing ones own name on a physical card also doesn't say say which joint account it is, yours or your partners (my partner and I each have Bank X, and each have a card for the other, which only has our own name, so, I feel your pain).
But, there is a way!
1. Tap the card, then tap the card[123] icon upper right and "Enter physical card information".
2. Either scan the card or type it in. Add the CVV while you're at it, seeing this later requires an additional FaceID.
3. Add "Description" for "Mine" or "Joint" or whatever. (KEY STEP)
When asked if you want to replace the card with same number say yes. It'll stay the same card, same transaction histories, etc., but now have a distinguishing description.
I agree, it would be nice if Apple added stickers, but the problem isn't, IMO, as bad as you make out.
Exceptions include transport and concert tickets. Most of the time this doesn't cause problems because I'm standing with the other people I'm travelling/gigging with, and the agent scanning the tickets doesn't care about any names on them.
But it is exactly as bad as they describe it. My bank doesn't provide color options for my cards, and there is no way to distinguish my two cards aside from the displayed four digits.
I'd like to take a moment to appreciate a tiny "UX feature" that punches above its weight: When multiple physical cards have different base-colors to their plastic, visible along the edge.
This reduces how often you even need to check the face of a card. With several in one sleeve/stack, you can slide out the one you want, knowing that (for example) blue is credit, green is debit, red is the shared family one etc.
With my kind of wallet, if I had to pick I'd rather customize the edge-color versus the faces.
I have a shared checking account with my spouse. Both my personal card and shared card are the same, save for the actual card number.
My wife and I share MANY accounts, and none of our cards have a "shared" name on it.
Second; have you tried this with actual 80yr olds with early onset? Because I have. It doesn’t work, not even close. The steps require to get to that point are impossible for an 80yr old with early onset to even get close to. From trust, to setup, to even the stupid double-click with arthritic fingers, it’s fraught with roadblocks. And forget swiping.
This is a massive problem. The lack of care for options to equip seniors with usable iPhones is a massive problem right now. It is causing suffering both in the seniors and in the people who love them.
And Apple+ wonder why people cling to older OS versions. It's not change so much as disorientation.
PS. I sharpie everything. Even with myopia, I can't read "best by" dates. It takes a powerful magnifier in addition to my macro lens eyes.(less the glasses) This is crazy. I sharpie the dates at home.
And a bit off-topic, only Trader Joe's provides big readable price labels. I need the phone camera to read prices elsewhere, even with the correct glass prescription. And ingredients? Fuggedaboutit.
UPC could be a starting point for fetching info, but nobody's starting.
Their experience is often utter shit.
Two examples:
1. Often older folks have their screen zoom maxed out for readability. Extreme zoom will often place critical fields and buttons off-screen - making the app useless.
2. Fingers and hands of older folks often tremble. So imagine holding in your trembling left hand your phone, while you're trying to hit a target with your trembling right finger. All while standing in line to get a discount on your groceries.
A piece of paper has infinite battery life and perfect UX (ignoring security for a second). I don't have to remember to add it to something and then worry if I added it, or how I can give it someone later...this idea of a pass you build doesn't seem to pass the "does it make sense" test.
Lower left, lower right, upper left, upper right, inside left, inside right, dollar bills left, dollar bills right.
I basically only know what’s in one or two places. I just end up rifling through everything until I find it
I'm in my 40s and don't have much trouble with reaching Home by swiping up from the bottom. But anecdotally, when I observe a person who is 65+ operate their iPhones, 9 times out of 10 they experience problems swiping up from bottom to reach Home. The swipe up does nothing, presumably because they aren't starting the swipe from low enough on the screen.
You can markup a card in a physical wallet. And then originally identical cards become visually distinguishable.
You can use the Accessibility settings to add a virtual home button that's always displayed in the same place on-screen. That seems to work pretty well for the older folks I know.
Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Assistive Touch
So true! Also my 84 year old mother can never figure the difference between a web site and an app. If I could add a home button and solve the second issue her life would be much better.
Or, say, Google Wallet shows you can the last 4 digits, and allows to name a card, so choosing between identical-looking cards of the same bank is easy (I do it regularly).
But Apple are not fans of letting the user customize things.
That’s why Apple has to copy the problem for the wallet?
If only a digital UI didn't have the same skeuomorpic limitations a physical card has ...oh wait!
(And it's not true that the same issue is true in a physical card wallet. In a physical card, either you get a different design from the bank, or you can trivially write on it with a marker or add a sticker to differentiate it).
>An 80 year old with early onset challenges can work this wallet, pick a card, and then hold the phone to the reader at a store.
A, yes, the standard target group for iOS and the Wallet app in particular.
I swear, the arguments people make...
The Apple thing where you can switch cards is a weird interface too, even after you have done it a few times.
Except that I can mark the actual cards in some way... plastic labels work perfectly fine on credit/debit cards.
But I can write on my cards with a pen to visually make them unique.
In my physical wallet I can take the card I use daily (which is on a limited account and no big deal if I lose it) and leave the others at home. On my phone, there are all the cards I ever used or plan to use at some point in the future.
[1] don't tell Mr. Fox he's running a business
[2] ... and will probably be adding a third
You may have multiple cards from the same bank (personal, family, business).
Different cash back from the same bank making you want to use one card over another.
Apparently an accessibility thing and maybe a wider standard than Mastercard. See image of cards near top of https://www.mastercard.com.au/en-au/personal/find-a-card/tou...
Tesla loves to hide critical functionality in non-standard places, often buried in touch screen menus. They can move items at any time. That's insane to me, but I guess I'm the outlier.
Android's move to gestures is lame copycat behavior. I've actually seen people online defending it on the grounds that using gestures feels cooler. Maybe that explains it, many people will take UI gimmicks over solid usability.
I never knew there was a virtual home button available in iOS; but apparently there is.
For me it's my daily driver, my Costco branded card, my airline's amex card, my USD denominated card, and my work-issued card. There are also two ATM/debit cards in there which I'll occasionally choose at small merchants where I know the CC fees hit them harder.
In most cases I just want the daily driver, but the airline card gets good rewards for dining so it does come out reasonably often as well. The USD card I can mostly ignore unless I'm traveling there and can temporarily set it as the default.
For example, I have bold text, larger text. On my mac I have all these contrast increasing settings enabled, simply because it's *not* good "design"
It's good that it's minimal, but this minimalism is also why many things don't work (timemachine, icloud files/photos -> everything needs to be automatic, causing recurring downloads follewed cache eviction of those files). Etc etc etc
Minimal is often an enemy of usable.
My current wallet doesn't give me any affordances: https://grifiti.com/products/grifiti-band-joes-3-25-x-1-25-i...
classic Apple situation - look, this is super clean, intuitive software! but if you want a reasonable level of flexibility that you would expect elsewhere, you are SOL.
Is there a reason to not pick a single card as your default payment card? I find it's pretty rare I need to pick a card manually unless it's a store card or card for specific spending type (resturants, gas, etc.)
Easier than my physical wallet tbh, where they're behind each other, which I say begrudgingly because I've long held out, only starting to use the app a couple of weeks ago.
I can imagine that we don't have this option just because people would put their PINs there, and maybe it's not exactly secure enough, but sprinkle some validation on top and we'd be ok.
This actually also explains why I couldn’t change my default card the other day - I must have been in that screen that opens from the button shortcut.
Will wonders never cease.
I could be missing something, but where there is no perfect solution, I want to be slower to say the option they chose is dumb.
Quite possible! Could you explain? I don’t see it yet.
I guess I just think of it as where there isn’t an obvious correct answer, best not to criticise another choice.
Especially when there seem to be inexplicable choices out there which should be criticised with higher priority!
I’ve just been participating in a conversation about the two different functionalities of the wallet app.
That seems clearer to me as an unnecessarily confusing experience.
In my case, I have a personal card and a shared card from the same bank. The card type is the same, one just happens to have my spouse as a co-owner.
Some banks do allow you to pick a card look/image. Most don't.
But whatever the case, Apple really should allow tagging cards in the Wallet with a small icon/emoji/something. It doesn't need to be fancy - just enough to visually distinguish two otherwise visually similar cards.
How about a simple, old fashioned text label for each card?
Discoverability of options on the iPhone is fraught with danger and distrust, I learned about CarPlay widgets a few days ago and I've used it for years.
Do stupid things and the UI looks stupid. Shocker.
But that would require collaboration, and standards, which seem to have gone away as smart phones came in.
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-overview/
[2] https://developer.android.com/identity/digital-credentials
A .pkpass file is a zipped directory that has a json file and some assets. There's no need to have a more limited version, a pass is already very limited.
The issue is spoofing. Major event ticketers are unwilling to publish passes if there's nothing to stop someone else from publishing a pass that is indistinguishable from their's and thus is an avenue for fraud.
The difference with events is that an ics file is not something someone's going to try to sell you or that you'd want to buy. But anyway, all Apple would have to do is stop checking the signing.
Many third party ticketing solutions venues and events use do support this, but for instance if you want to sell tickets for a party and self-host, you need another external integration, or a developer account. Generating a PDF with a QR code, and publishing an .ics file is essentially free.
Having an authenticated developer account at least provides some level of speed bump to scammers, and a better starting point for the police.
The charitable explanation is that the wallet is designed for credit cards, and tickets were an after thought. Though I suspect it is really Apple trying to keep a walled garden, just like they always have.
Be really interesting to see how their approach evolves over the next couple years with sea changes happening all around them in this moment.
It seems more to me that they never provided proper third party integration to basically create a pkpass file encompassing
- a QR code embedding arbitrary text up to, say, 128B or something, usually ASCII characters and usually a ticket ID and/or URL
- 1-2 lines of supplementary "clear text"
- a logo and/or fancy color gradient if needed
You can also make passes for other people and send them / share them.
Looks like someone else recommended a competitor Pass4 Wallet as well, may need to go compare.
The weird thing is that this was a feature when Wallet was first introduced. You could create a URL that would add a pass to a wallet. There were web sites that helped out with it. I still have some of the passes I created this way a decade or more ago.
It's actually better than native passes in some cases because you can add custom info to the entry, like a gate code. It's really flexible in terms of barcodes, QR codes, etc as well.
Great app I'll probably continue using, I'm not confident Apple will allow the amount of customizability it allows.
https://girappe.com/ is also dead
As someone who does roughly the same thing, the language used to describe the new capabilities isn't encouraging to me; I don't want to "add a pass", I want to "add a photo" and bypass all of this other complexity entirely.
> Google Wallet. Create a Pass is iPhone-only. Roughly half of the wallet-using world is on Android, and our generator builds Google Wallet passes from the same form.
What does this actually mean? Google Wallet has had a button to add your own passes for many years. How is the feature described here different?
https://support.google.com/wallet/answer/12060038
Anything with a bar code or QR code will work. It's not complicated.
I barely look at notifications anymore, it’s useless, does not group by app, can’t take any actions from there. Even if you open the app, the notification remains, so it’s just clutter at this point.
Clipboard does not exist.
Chrome sometimes when opened, opens up the address bar and there is no close button, I need to navigate away from the page I was on, or refresh. So I switched to safari, good job google.
The biggest annoyance would be the back button or rather the lack of it. Every app does it somewhere different. It could be a left swipe in some apps, a back button on top left, a tick box on top right. There is no mental model you can rely on.
Then I realized I am using it wrong. iPhones were never made for people like you or me. We just wants to finish our work as soon as possible. We zoom through multiple apps and get things done. iOS is for toddlers/old people and technologically challenged crowd. We need to think like them.
So I treat the notification shade just like other users, glance and ignore. No need to manage it or clear it.
Clipboard are needed when you copy multiple things. That’s because you want to paste multiple things. You are trying to do too much at the same time. Think of the most “simplest” person you know, they wouldn’t do what you’re doing. So I stopped doing that.
Back button was only an annoyance when I either used non-apple apps or do things fast. Again doing things fast is not what your simple friend would do. They would take time and each action, press, swipe would be deliberate, not careful yet confused.
Basically stop trying to be a smart person while using an iPhone. You might be a wizard in front of a terminal. iOS is designed for a large and specific set of audience and I truly respect Apple for catering to them. Most corporations like Google or Microsoft will try to teach their users and make them something they are not. Apple accepts them as they are.
This comment has a lot of grammar mistakes which I am frankly not going to fix. The apple keyboard is terrible to go in between words and sentences to edit them. But the target audience would never do it anyway and Apple proudly supports their decision by not improving the keyboard. I think that’s a noble thing to do.
He paid me to create the icon for it, which was my first paid graphic design job: https://www.noio.nl/2012/10/pass-creator-app-icon/
Thanks Paul.. good times!
Although it is not out yet, Garbage Country's art direction looks good :) wishlisted.
An option to override automatic (un)archival of passes is also desperately needed. Some passes just don’t expire based on time, and too many pass creators are too incompetent to put the correct time in even if they do.
Airlines in particular are prone to things like using local time in a field expecting UTC, which has made boarding passes auto-archive hours before leaving for the airport for me…
PREACH. If you buy an open return (any time within 30 days of outward), Avanti set the expiry on both wallet passes to be the outward day. Which means your "valid for 30 days" ticket disappears almost immediately. Absolute shambles.
Doesn't help with the "automatic" part, but I try to remember to do this every few months.
Google wallet has had the abillity to scan tickets and create custom passes for years.
This article frames it like Apple are coming to save the day from lazy developers, but in reality its Apple who have been sleeping on this while other competing services have offered it for some time now.
> Google Wallet. Create a Pass is iPhone-only. Roughly half of the wallet-using world is on Android, and our generator builds Google Wallet passes from the same form.
From the blog
Zero dollars, lets you geofence passes when you create them.
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses [1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/passkit
Apple uses every opportunity to try to increase developer and user lock in. This was no exception. I see this new move as begrudgingly opening the doors to all as not enough people were signing with Apple Developer Certificates.
You could do the same thing with shortcuts I guess but using the first class feature is nice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...
Previously, you could only add passes if the company supported it. So most airlines have Apple Wallet passes, but most gyms don’t. This update will allow you to create your own passes. Basically just storing the QR codes (and maybe some metadata?) in one easy-to-use place on your phone. I can imagine this being convenient for daily use so you don’t have to track a gym tag with a QR code and a library tag with a QR code, etc. Also nice for tickets to events.
https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423...
FlixBus (I might be misremembering) is the only service I ever found which lets you pay with Apple Pay and add a pass to Wallet all from Safari. For airlines and other bus/train services I always have to install the app to do both. Maybe this will allow me to buy tickets on the web then make my own pass.
¹ Assuming I even update to iOS 27, though.
I've never tried to pay with Apple Pay on ticketmaster.com, but I assume I could do that as well.
Looking forward to adding it to Apple wallet.
As an aside, does the Jenny number still work at most stores?
Surely this was considered earlier within Apple. I wonder what changed that they decided to do this now.
https://apps.apple.com/mw/app/pass4wallet-store-cards/id1423...
That's a feature, not a bug. It means you can sell the ticket if you can't make it. Thankfully (/s) we have Ticketmaster with rolling codes now, so, no reselling.
This also means I can do it twice if I choose so.
The way I'm interpreting this is that it's a way to abstract stagnant QR or barcode passes for smaller businesses and libraries. We'll see at the WWDC though.
Thieves could snatch my paper ticket from my hands before, but at least in that situation I would be aware of it.
And I'll still need it because I doubt I'll be switching to 26 or 27 any time soon.
Edit: Pass2UWallet is the name of the app I'm using if anyone cares. I'm not getting a commission for that yadda yadda doo.
I guess there is no appetite for “antitrust” in the US right now.
As for sherlocking, this is such a minor use case that I'm not sure why anyone (minus maybe the initial app developers) would be upset. As a user, I need one less app to do something (that I should've been able to do for years). It's not like they're stripping an ability away from developers to hide it behind their own gates.
That’s not really helping explain it, so here’s some examples:
Airplane tickets, library membership barcode, sports tickets, loyalty cards for your local coffee shop, conference tickets, etc.
Essentially anything with a barcode first and foremost. The website that this blog is about allows you to generate your own passes.
I think "create" is the confusing part. It should be "digitize" or something. Either this, or "pass" means something else here.
If you want to issue tickets is your wallet the most obvious place to do it from? Why would an airline issue tickets from an iPhone?
Or, if this is just for storing tickets issued by other people, why does it benefit from going into the wallet app?
It's handy because it provides an organizational tool. Airplane tickets are in wallet, concert tickets are in wallet. Maybe ferry passes and store discount ids should be too.
And also because you get better results from scanning a regenerated 2d/3d barcode after decoding the original vs scanning a photo of the original.
In my experience, if the code scans, the code scans.
I've used a third party app for this for a UK weekly pass train ticket you could only buy physically, but if you buy it on a train rather than at a station they can't print you a ticket with a magnetic strip and they have to give you one with a barcode (technically an Aztec code), which you can then scan onto your phone and use at the gate. But I kept the original ticket with me too and would use that if a person asked to inspect it
Today's app makers do not respect users. See them as big milk-cow fan-base, that's it! So they can piss off, I don't care about them either!
(Better as in Phone tap to pay has an extra layer of security that card tap to pay does not. But also yes, cynically, better for Apple because Apple gets a small cut in Phone tap to pay to help pay for that extra layer of security.)
Using an Apple Watch for tap to pay is really nice, for what it is worth.
I wear a garmin when I work out but otherwise want a mechanical watch with no tracking or distractions.
But if you have to pass a card because some business still feels that they have to touch your cards in this age, the EMV chip on the titanium card is just fine. They should just insert the card after a second or two of wondering why it doesn't tap. If their reader only takes tap to pay, then their reader needs to placed in a more convenient place for you to tap things like your phone or able to be passed to you for you to do what you need to do to pay.
No one should be physically handling my payment method anymore but me. It's not a great service to walk 20 feet away from me with my credit card just to make a payment at some hard to reach terminal. In fact it's a security risk for skimming and card stealing (and always has been).
I don’t really believe that places that require membership cards are going to let users start creating their own, though.
I think Wallet is great and the adoption in certain areas like boarding passes is almost 100% and it beats digging through email to find some pdf and zooming in on some QR code when you have to present it (Hoping that your screen doesn't rotate in the worst possible moment). Also many big cities support it for public transport and most banking apps allow you to use your credit cards there for Apple Pay.
In a gym context specifically: a lot of gym wear doesn't have pockets. Being able to leave your phone and physical wallet at home or in a locker and use your watch (which you also use for workout tracking) for every membership card swipe, vending machine electrolyte/protein drink purchase, and gym class ticket can be very convenient.
I had to switch to a physical card and the MTA advice was to get an iphone
Apple wallet lets me install passes and charge them up without even being in the country that I'll be visiting yet. It makes things massively more tedious. I wish more European countries supported it, because as much as Europeans have some weird pride in their public transportation, they're more complicated and backwards than even the poorest Asian nations. Being able to add any pass to Apple wallet would be a huge step in resolving that.
As long as it scans they don’t care.
Ticketing is a great use-case for it, I have flight tickets, concerts/events tickets, airport bus tickets, if it keeps expanding to integrate with even more tickets (my local public transportation system, the express train to the airport, more venues) it will only become more useful.
Edit: also, all of my cards, I haven't used a physical card at POS terminals in years, they only get used on ATMs.
Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the apps on my electronic devices but I also carry paper copies whenever I can because electronic stuff breaks in various ways.
Sure, if you carry the physical card. But that's exactly what I get from having it on the phone -- I don't want an inch-thick wallet from times of old, I want to carry as little as possible. I have a tiny magsafe wallet with ID, one physical credit card, and an airtag card. Everything else lives on the phone.
The amount of creativity and innovation the App Store has stifled is surely enormous and downright sad.