Apple Wallet and Google Wallet loyalty cards: an owner's guide

More and more customers pay with their phone, and many of them would rather keep a loyalty card there too than carry another piece of card in their pocket. So it's no surprise that "Apple Wallet loyalty card" is one of the first things owners search for when they think about replacing paper stamp cards.

The answers you'll find are mostly sales pages. This guide is the plain version: what a wallet loyalty card actually is, what's the same and what's different between Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, why you almost certainly need both, and what it takes to set one up. First, though, the question that matters most: is a stamp card worth running at all? The calculator below answers it with your own numbers.

What the calculator shows

The starting numbers describe a small barbershop or salon: 600 different customers a year, each visiting about 6 times, spending €30 a visit. The card gives a free €30 service after 10 stamps, and that service costs you about 40% of its price. Half of your customers join, and members come back 10% more often.

With those numbers, 300 members make about 180 extra visits a year, worth €5,400. Their rewards cost you about €2,400, so the card is roughly €3,000 ahead. It pays for itself once members visit about 4.2% more often.

The 10% extra visits is an assumption, not a promise. Start low, and measure the real number once your card is running.

Now change one number: Customers who join the card. Drop it from 50% to 25% and the net gain halves, to about €1,500. Raise it to 75% and it grows by half. A loyalty card only works for the people who have it, and that's where the choice of wallet comes in.

What a wallet loyalty card is

A wallet loyalty card is a pass: a small digital card saved in the phone's built-in wallet app, next to payment cards and boarding passes. On an iPhone that's Apple Wallet. On most Android phones it's Google Wallet.

For your customers, three things make it different from a paper card or a loyalty app:

• Nothing to download. The wallet app is already on the phone.
• It's always with them. If they have their phone, they have their card.
• It updates itself. When you add a stamp, the card on their phone shows the new count.

For you, it means you can see your card members and how close each one is to a reward, which a paper card never tells you.

Apple Wallet vs Google Wallet: what's the same

The good news is that, for a stamp card, the two work in much the same way.

	Apple Wallet	Google Wallet
Phones	iPhone	Android phones
How the card is added	Tap "Add to Apple Wallet" on a web page or in an email	Tap "Add to Google Wallet" on a web page or in an email
What the card shows	Your logo, colours, stamp count and a QR code	Your logo, colours, stamp count and a QR code
How stamps appear	The card refreshes after each stamp	The card refreshes after each stamp
What you need to issue cards	An Apple developer account and an Apple-issued signing certificate	A Google Wallet issuer account

Both platforms are built for this. Apple lists the store card as one of its standard pass styles (Apple: Get started with Apple Wallet), and Google has a dedicated loyalty card pass type (Google Wallet: key concepts).

What's different

How cards update. On Apple Wallet, the pass lives on the phone and your system tells it when there's a new version. Apple notes that once the signing certificate expires, existing passes keep working but can no longer be updated (Apple). On Google Wallet, the card's details live on Google's servers, and your system changes them there. Either way, if you use a service, it handles this for you. It's worth asking how quickly stamps show up on the card.

Lock screen and location. Apple Wallet can show a store card on the lock screen when the customer is near one of up to ten saved locations (Apple: Showing a pass on the lock screen). It's a nice touch, but not every service uses it, so don't choose a provider on the assumption that it does. Ask.

Where it's available. Apple Wallet comes with every iPhone. Google Wallet is available in a long and growing list of countries, but Google notes that some passes are only available in certain countries (Google Wallet supported countries). If your customers are somewhere Google Wallet isn't, make sure there's another way for them to show their card.

Messages to customers. Wallets were built so that the card updates, not as a marketing channel. Before you sign up for any service, ask exactly what your customer sees on their phone when you "send" something, and whether they had to agree to it first.

Do you need both? Almost certainly

Unless you know every customer uses the same kind of phone, offering only one wallet leaves part of your counter out. The split varies a lot by country. In September 2026, iPhones accounted for about 54% of mobile web traffic in the US and 47% in the UK, but only 31% worldwide, where Android is far ahead (StatCounter: US, UK, worldwide).

That's web traffic, not your customers, but the lesson holds: at most counters, a big share of people carry the "other" phone. A card that works on only one of them caps your join rate, and the calculator above shows what the join rate is worth.

Building one yourself vs using a service

You can issue wallet cards yourself. You'd need:

• An Apple developer account and a pass signing certificate from Apple (Apple), renewed before it expires.
• A Google Wallet issuer account and a loyalty class for your programme (Google).
• A small server that creates each customer's card, signs it, and updates both wallets every time you stamp.
• A way to stamp at the counter: scanning the card's QR code or looking up the customer.

It's a real project for a developer, and an ongoing job for whoever keeps it running. For most shops, a service that does all of this is the practical choice. When you compare them, ask:

1. Does it work with both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet?
2. Do customers need to download an app or create an account? Every extra step lowers your join rate.
3. How much does a customer have to type? The less data you ask for, the more people join, and the less you have to protect.
4. How do staff stamp? It should take seconds, even at a busy counter.
5. Can you see who's close to a reward, and contact only customers who agreed to it?
6. Can customers have their data deleted? If you serve customers in the EU, the GDPR applies to you.

Getting customers to add the card

The wallet does the hard part, but people still need a reason and a moment to join. What tends to work:

• Ask every customer for the first few weeks. A sign alone is easy to ignore.
• Put a QR code where people wait: at the till, on the mirror, on the table.
• Give the first stamp on the day they join, so nobody starts at zero.
• Pick a reward people want. Our loyalty card ideas generator suggests rewards and stamp counts for twelve types of business.

If you're still on paper, our guide to switching from paper punch cards to digital walks through the move step by step. And to dig deeper into the numbers, the loyalty card ROI guide explains each input of the calculator above.

How it works with Zilo

Zilo gives your business a stamp card that works in both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. Customers scan your QR code, enter their email address, tap the confirmation link we email them, and add the card. No app, no account, no password. Staff stamp from the web dashboard by scanning the card's QR code or searching by email, and the card on the customer's phone updates after each stamp. Customers can also show the QR code on their card page if they'd rather not use a wallet.

You can see who's close to a reward and email reminders and offers to customers who opted in. Zilo doesn't send messages to the wallet card itself; it only updates the stamp count.

Zilo is free during the beta, so you can measure your real join rate and visit numbers before deciding anything. Create your free wallet loyalty card.