How to add a loyalty card to Apple Wallet: the merchant guide (2026) — Stampo

An Apple Wallet loyalty card is a digital pass stored in the customer's iPhone Wallet app, alongside their boarding passes and bank cards. The customer scans a QR code or taps a link, taps "Add to Apple Wallet", and the card lives on their phone from then on. No app install, no account creation, no password. The merchant scans the customer's pass at the counter to add a stamp or unlock a reward.

This article is the merchant-side answer. What do you actually do to put a loyalty card into your customers' Apple Wallets, what does the customer experience look like, and what does and does not work.

We make Stampo, a digital loyalty card SaaS for small shops. Apple Wallet support is the core of what Stampo does, so we have a bias toward the wallet-pass form of loyalty. We will name that bias where it matters.

What an Apple Wallet loyalty card actually is

Apple Wallet (formerly Passbook, launched in 2012) is the built-in iPhone app that stores passes. Boarding passes, event tickets, store cards, transit cards, and loyalty cards all use the same underlying format — a .pkpass file that Apple defines and validates.

A loyalty pass in Apple Wallet has four parts the customer sees:

The front of the pass — your shop name, logo, the current stamp count (or points balance), and the reward at the end ("Free drink after 10 stamps").
The back of the pass — your contact info, terms, links to your site.
A barcode or QR code — used at the counter so the merchant can scan and add a stamp.
Notification updates — when the customer earns a stamp, the lock screen briefly shows the updated count. Same for "you have 1 stamp left" or "your free coffee is ready".

The customer does not download anything. The pass is the app.

How a customer adds your loyalty card

The customer-facing flow is short. Once you have a loyalty card live on a tool like Stampo, every customer arrives at a public landing page (typically yourshop.cards/c/yourshop or similar). On that page they see your card, a form to enter their first name and email, and a button.

When they tap "Add to Apple Wallet", iOS handles the rest:

The pass file downloads to the iPhone
Apple Wallet opens automatically with a preview of the pass
The customer taps "Add" in the top-right corner
The pass is now in their wallet

Total time from QR scan to wallet-pass-installed: about ten seconds. No app install, no account creation.

How merchants set this up

The merchant-side setup depends on which tool you use, but the steps are the same shape across all of them:

Pick a wallet-pass loyalty tool. The tool generates the .pkpass files for you. You do not write code, you do not deal with Apple Developer accounts (the loyalty tool handles that — they sign passes with their certificate, and your shop's branding lives inside).
Configure your card. Your logo, your primary color, how many stamps unlock the reward, what the reward is. With Stampo this is a 5-minute form. Most competitors are similar.
Get your activation surface. Either a QR code printed on counter signage (so customers scan with their iPhone camera and land on the wallet-pass install page), a short URL you put on receipts, or a link you can post on Instagram.
Start scanning at the counter. When a customer pays, you open the merchant scanner (on a phone or tablet) and scan their wallet pass. The stamp count updates in real time on both sides.

For the deeper how-to walking through Stampo specifically, see how to set up a digital loyalty card. For a vendor comparison across Stampo, Stamp Me, Loopy Loyalty, Magic Stamp, Passtastic, and POS-integrated alternatives, see the 2026 loyalty card software cost comparison.

Apple's requirements, restrictions, and what breaks

Apple is strict about wallet passes. The pass file format (.pkpass) is a signed bundle of images, layout JSON, and content. If anything is malformed, Apple Wallet silently refuses to add the pass. The errors a small-shop owner might run into are almost always handled by the loyalty tool, but the constraints matter for understanding what is possible:

The pass image dimensions are fixed. Logo must be 160×50 pixels (320×100 at 2x), strip and thumbnail images have specific sizes. Stampo and other tools auto-resize your uploaded logo.
The pass is signed by the tool's Apple Developer account, not yours. Your shop does not need its own Pass Type ID or signing certificate. The loyalty SaaS handles the signing layer.
iOS device required. The customer needs an iPhone or an Apple Watch paired with an iPhone. Android customers go through Google Wallet instead — see the Google Wallet setup guide.
No active updates without web service URLs. For the stamp count to update on the customer's phone the moment you scan it, the loyalty tool needs working "web service URLs" that Apple's Push Notification Service can call. Most SaaS tools handle this. Tools that do not handle it require the customer to manually refresh — a bad experience.
Customers can delete the pass at any time. Same way you delete a boarding pass after a flight. Once it is deleted, they need to re-add it through your activation surface to keep collecting stamps.

The TL;DR for merchants: pick a tool that handles the technical layer for you. Stampo handles it. Stamp Me, Loopy, Passtastic, and Magic Stamp all handle it. POS-integrated modules (Square Loyalty, Toast Loyalty) also handle it but require the parent POS subscription as a prerequisite.

How an Apple Wallet loyalty card compares to other approaches

Approach	Customer side	Merchant side	Cost	Best for
Apple Wallet pass	Built into iPhone, no app install	QR scan at counter	€9-39/month standalone	Shops with iPhone-skewed customer base (developed markets, urban Western Europe)
Google Wallet pass	Built into Android, no app install	Same scan flow	Same SaaS pricing	Shops with Android-skewed customer base (most of Asia, parts of US)
Branded loyalty app	Customer installs your app	App backend	$100-500/month + dev cost	Larger brands with budget; overkill for one-location indie shops
Paper stamp card	Card in wallet	Stamp pad	€150 to start + admin time	Shops with no smartphone customer base (rare in 2026)
Generic loyalty app (Stocard-style)	Customer installs a third-party wallet app	Customer manages their own cards	Free for the customer, no merchant offering	Customers who collect cards from many shops

For a fuller side-by-side of 11 specific tools and approaches, the 2026 loyalty card software cost comparison breaks each one down with pricing, features, and what each one is best for.

The wallet-pass approach (Apple + Google together) is usually the right answer for an in-store small shop in 2026, because it captures both customer bases without asking either side to install an app or create an account.

Notes on the post-Stocard landscape

Stocard, the popular consumer wallet-aggregator app, was acquired by Klarna in 2021 and merged into the Klarna app in 2024. The deprecation left millions of consumers searching for "which app is replacing Stocard" — a question that comes up repeatedly in People Also Ask SERPs.

Stocard was a consumer-side tool. It let customers store loyalty cards from many merchants in one app, without those merchants having to do anything. The wallet-pass model (Apple Wallet + Google Wallet) replaces it from the OTHER side: the merchant generates a proper signed pass, and the customer adds it to their native phone wallet instead of relying on a third-party aggregator.

If you are a merchant whose customers used to ask you to "scan their card in Stocard", the wallet-pass model is the right replacement.

TL;DR

An Apple Wallet loyalty card is a .pkpass file that lives in the customer's built-in iPhone Wallet app. It requires no app install and no account creation. The customer scans a QR code, taps "Add to Apple Wallet", and the card is on their phone for as long as they keep it.

Merchants set this up through a wallet-pass loyalty SaaS like Stampo. The SaaS handles the Apple Developer account, the pass signing, the layout files, and the push-notification updates. The merchant uploads their logo, picks their colors, sets the stamp count, and starts scanning customer passes at the counter.

Cheapest published always-paid wallet-pass loyalty tool for in-store small businesses in May 2026 is Stampo at €9/month (with a €199 lifetime option that takes the recurring decision off the table). The cost comparison covers the alternatives.

FAQ

Can I store my loyalty cards in Apple Wallet?

Yes, if the merchant offers a wallet-pass loyalty card. Any wallet pass signed by a valid Apple Developer account can be added to Apple Wallet. Most digital loyalty card platforms (Stampo, Stamp Me, Loopy Loyalty, Passtastic, Magic Stamp) offer Apple Wallet passes by default.

How do I add loyalty cards to my iPhone Wallet?

The merchant gives you a link or a QR code. You tap the link or scan the QR with your iPhone camera, which opens a page with the loyalty card preview. Tap "Add to Apple Wallet" and the card is installed in seconds, no app required.

How do I put my loyalty cards on my phone?

If the loyalty card is from a merchant that offers wallet passes (most digital loyalty programs do in 2026), you tap "Add to Apple Wallet" on the merchant's signup page. If the merchant only offers a paper card, you can take a photo of the card and store it in your photo library, but the merchant still has to stamp the paper version.

Where can I store my loyalty cards on my iPhone?

The native Apple Wallet app, in the same place where you keep boarding passes, event tickets, and Apple Pay credit cards. Tap the Wallet app on the home screen to see all your passes in one place.

Can I manually add a loyalty card to Apple Wallet?

If the merchant has issued a proper .pkpass file (which is what any digital loyalty SaaS like Stampo provides), then yes — tap "Add to Apple Wallet" on the merchant's link. You cannot manually add an arbitrary loyalty card (e.g. a photo of a paper card) into Apple Wallet's loyalty section; Apple only accepts signed .pkpass files.

Can I add my Tesco Clubcard to Apple Wallet?

Tesco has its own Clubcard app, and at the time of writing they do not provide a wallet-pass version. You can add Clubcard as an Apple Wallet pass through certain third-party tools, but the official path is the Tesco Clubcard app. This article focuses on small-business loyalty cards specifically, where the wallet-pass approach is the dominant pattern.

Can I add my UK driving licence to my Apple Wallet?

The UK has been rolling out a digital driving licence inside the GOV.UK ID Check app, but as of May 2026 it is not yet supported in Apple Wallet directly. This is unrelated to small-business loyalty cards.

Which app is replacing Stocard?

Stocard was acquired by Klarna in 2021 and merged into the main Klarna app in 2024. For consumers who used Stocard to store multiple merchant cards in one place, the closest replacements are native phone wallets (Apple Wallet on iOS, Google Wallet on Android), assuming the merchant provides a wallet-pass loyalty card. For merchants whose customers used to ask "scan my card in Stocard", offering an Apple Wallet + Google Wallet loyalty card via a tool like Stampo replaces that experience natively.

If you want to see how an Apple Wallet loyalty card actually looks for your shop, start a 14-day Stampo trial — no card required, set up in 10 minutes, your wallet pass live on iPhone and Android.

Verified against the Apple Wallet documentation and current SaaS competitor offerings as of May 2026. We re-check the constraints and pricing quarterly.