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Comment by rjh29 | Hacker News Reader

Starbucks on Google can be added to Google Wallet. But then I went to use it and they told me to close wallet and open the app. Shrug.

I've had patchy success with adding boarding passes to the wallet too. Support seems half baked.

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Tim Horton's allows reward card in Apple Wallet, but not Scan And Pay (which gives rewards and pays for order at same time). I wonder if the addition of the payment creates a dynamic QR code controlled by the app, and therefore not allowed in Apple Wallet for some reason.

EDIT - I think this is the case. When I open and close my Scan and Pay QR code it is changing each time whereas my Reward only card (in Apple Wallet) is static. Must be due to security.

Wallet transactions are all effectively presented as offline. I usually pay with Apple Wallet at Maverick (fuel/cstore). When I do so, the rewards account, which is also in Wallet, automagically applies. It stays even if I remove the app. I’ve seen it be broken in various ways over the past several years but at this point it all works right. The app matters in theory to authenticate and generate the Pass, but is otherwise inert. I had it running with no iOS permission enabled it but never used it and eventually dropped it. It had points and deals and such, and that’s what websites are for.

It's probably because if someone were to get your static barcode (some account number?), they'd be able to use it immediately and forever. Whereas the QR code is a payment link that authenticates on the backend. Kind of like a credit card magstrip versus the chip.

It used to be difficult to scan qr codes with black backgrounds and older phone apps will blast their screen LED lights to make it easier for the qr scanner to read it, but in the end, all you're doing is scanning a qr code usually.

I had the black background issue at concerts for years but I haven't had that problem in the last 2 years.

HDR maybe? An image by itself can now tell the screen to go full brightness on selective parts or the whole thing. Actually more than full brightness.

That's funny. I've paid at Starbucks with a screenshot plenty of times, but they probably thought it was the real app.

I was going to say, I scan screenshots of passes/codes all the time, including airplanes and busses. I haven't tried a photo, but I feel like there's a good shot it would work just fine. I wonder if a gallery app could be a poor man's pass app.

The wallet app is honestly foreign to me, I just have QR codes in my camera roll

In China I was surprised a few years ago when my train ticket did not work like this. Needed data on to do a live update of the QR code, or something live in any case.

While you had the app,

or without it installed?

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