Apple Wallet and Google Wallet Loyalty Cards: The End of the Plastic Card

Look inside your own wallet. There is a good chance you will find at least one battered, half-smudged stamp card, and you no longer remember which café it belongs to. Now look at your phone. It is always with you, always charged, and it never gets left at home. That is exactly why boarding passes, cinema tickets, and bank cards have moved into the phone’s wallet over the past few years. The loyalty card is next.

In this article we walk through what a wallet pass is, why it beats a plastic card, and how it works as a lightweight entry point alongside the full Revino app.

What is a wallet pass?

A wallet pass is a digital card that goes straight into Apple Wallet (iPhone) or Google Wallet (Android). The same place your bank cards, boarding passes, and event tickets live. The customer adds it from the Revino app, and from then on they can also pull it up from the phone’s wallet.

The card carries the customer’s Revino identifier, short code, and a QR code that can be scanned at the counter. It identifies the same account as the QR code inside the app, but it can also be pulled up from the phone’s wallet. No paper, no hand-drawn stamp, no lost card.

Why is it better than a plastic stamp card?

We already covered the problems with paper and plastic in our digital vs paper loyalty cards article, but a wallet pass takes it one level further:

• It cannot get lost. The phone is always with the customer. A cardboard card ends up in the wash, the car, or the bin.
• It cannot be faked. No more borrowed pen to stamp your own card. Points come from your system, after a scan.
• Zero printing cost. A plastic card runs €0.30 to €0.70 apiece. Printed a thousand times, that is real money that simply does not exist with a wallet pass.
• Always current. Change the reward or the design and the card updates for everyone. You cannot recall a card you already printed.

Why is it a good entry point next to the app?

Many loyalty programs lose momentum when the first step is downloading a full app. The Revino app is valuable for regulars because it gives them more features, better visibility, and a deeper relationship with the places they visit. At the first entry point, though, it helps to ask for the smallest possible step.

A wallet pass reduces that entry friction:

• No need to open the app every time. Once the customer has added the card, they can pull it up from Wallet at checkout.
• Faster at the counter. There is no plastic card to find and no specific app screen to dig for while a queue builds behind them.
• It sits where the customer already looks. On most phones Wallet is a shortcut on the lock screen, so it is immediately available even for occasional guests.

One important point: the two are not mutually exclusive. Revino supports both. Your committed regular can use the full app, while the occasional guest stays with the wallet card. What matters is that nobody stalls at the entry point.

The lock-screen reminder few people know about

A wallet pass has one feature that is worth the whole thing on its own: the location-based notification. You can set the card to surface on the customer’s lock screen when they get near your shop. No push spam, no nagging. Just a quiet reminder at the exact moment they are deciding where to grab a coffee.

Add scheduled updates on top of that. If the customer is 2 points short of a reward, the back of the card can show: “Only 2 points to your free coffee.” It is the same psychological nudge as a push notification, just on one more channel.

What does it look like in practice?

A typical flow in a café:

1. The customer joins the Revino loyalty program, or signs in to their existing account.
2. In the app, they open their personal QR code and tap “Add to Wallet.”
3. The card is added to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet with the customer’s Revino QR code and short code.
4. At checkout, the staff member scans either the Wallet card or the QR code in the app, and the points go to the same Revino account.

From then on, the customer does not have to find a plastic card or open the app every time. They can pull up the Wallet card, while the same Revino system handles point collection in the background.

Setting it up with Revino

Revino generates an Apple Wallet and Google Wallet compatible Revino account card for the customer. The card is used for customer identification: it makes the same QR code and short code available from the phone’s wallet that the customer would otherwise use inside the app.

There is no separate Apple or Google Wallet development on your side. The customer adds the card from the Revino app, and your staff can award points with the same QR code scan they use for the in-app code.

Summary

A wallet pass meets the customer where their card is quick to reach: in the phone’s wallet. It is hard to lose, impossible to fake, always at hand, and able to speak up at the right moment.

The plastic card will not vanish overnight, but the direction is clear. Whoever switches now reaches part of their audience on paper today, and a growing part through the wallet already in their pocket.

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Revino gives customers an Apple Wallet and Google Wallet compatible account card, so point collection works from both the app and the phone’s wallet. Try it free with a 7-day trial!