Apple Wallet’s Final Frontier: iOS 27 May Finally Let You Ditch Third-Party Pass Apps
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With Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) only a few weeks away, the countdown to Apple’s unveiling of iOS 27 has begun. Several reports over the course of the year so far have already pointed to a new Siri chatbot as the big tentpole feature in iOS 27, but now we’re starting to get some insights on smaller features we can expect from Apple’s next big release.
Apple finally delivering on its promised Siri improvements will likely steal the show at next month’s WWDC keynote, and if recent reports are accurate, Apple plans to go above and beyond the “personalized” Siri it showed off WWDC 2024, implementing a standalone Siri app that serves as a full chatbot to rival ChatGPT and Gemini.
Beyond that, iOS 27 has been widely expected to be a “polish” release where Apple will focus on performance and stability, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t getting a few other new features. Last week, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed insider details on new generative AI editing tools in the Photos app and the folding of visual intelligence into a new Siri feature in the Camera app.
Now, Gurman is back with another scoop on what we can expect next month, and in this case it’s something that’s even longer overdue than the new Siri.
In a report yesterday, Gurman revealed that Apple will finally let users build their own passes in the Wallet app — a feature that’s been so conspicuously absent that at least a dozen third-party developers have stepped forward to fill in the gap.
While the app that we know today as Apple Wallet is primarily used to hold payment cards for Apple Pay, it actually began its life in 2012 as “Passbook.” Back then, credit and debit cards were still two years away and digital IDs felt like a pipe dream, but Passbook still promised a great way to replace all the odds and ends that we carried in our wallets, like loyalty cards, tickets, and boarding passes.
Sadly, it didn’t gain much traction until Apple Pay turned it into an actual Wallet app, but even then it still relied on companies to provide the passes. Few were interested in providing something that would discourage users from opening their own apps, and even today there are more than a few prominent holdouts (we’re looking at you, Costco).
It wouldn’t have been so bad if Apple had provided a way for users to turn their own physical cards into digital passes. After all, it wasn’t like we were talking about actual payment cards — most of these were just pieces of plastic with barcodes or QR codes on the front. It took only a few weeks after Passbook launched for third-party websites to pop up offering ways for users to create their own passes, and it wasn’t even that hard for someone with the technical chops to build one manually, as the format was well documented by Apple. I still have one or two in my modern Apple Wallet that date back to the Passbook era.
Those websites were eventually replaced by actual iPhone apps in the App Store, making it clear that Apple had no problem with this grassroots pass-minting market. Nevertheless, for the past 14 years, the only official way to get a loyalty card or other type of pass into Apple Wallet has been to use the issuing company’s website or app.
However, that may be set to change. If Gurman’s information is accurate, Apple is about to ”Sherlock” another category of apps by building a “Create a Pass” feature directly into the Wallet app.
Apple has developed a pass-building tool for iOS 27 Wallet, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The feature lets users take a QR code and generate a custom pass around it, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been announced.
Mark Gurman
Gurman describes the feature for “situations where, for example, a gym or concert app provides a QR code for entry but doesn’t support the Wallet app.” This is exactly where third-party apps have been used in the past, but it’s also fair to say that these aren’t tools that many folks even know about, much less are willing to take the time to download, install and figure out.
According to Gurman’s sources, iOS 27 will add the “Create a Pass” option directly into the Wallet app under the plus button — the same place users go to add payment cards, transit passes, and digital IDs. The interface describes it as used to “create passes for tickets, memberships, gift cards and more.”
The option will allow the user to create a pass from scratch or use the iPhone’s Camera to take a QR code and turn it into a digital ticket. Users will even be able to customize the style and colors and add their own images and text fields.
Apple is testing three template options: standard, membership and event. Standard, in orange, is a default option for any type of pass, while membership, in blue, is geared toward entering places like gyms. The event pass, in purple, is meant for tickets to games, movies and other occasions.
Mark Gurman
It’s a bit mystifying that it’s taken Apple so long to develop this, especially since Android has offered this functionality for years. We have to assume it’s not the first time Apple’s software engineers and designers have thought of this feature, but it likely sat so low down on the list that no one ever actually got around to it.
While this will eliminate the need for the collection of third-party apps that have popped up to serve this purpose, they had to know they were living on borrowed time. After all, it’s not like the situation with Journal, where Apple built an entirely new app that risked displacing alternatives like Day One. Pass creation apps lived on the back of Apple’s own Wallet app, handling a gap that Apple itself was bound to fill eventually.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
