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Leat Help Center

Can I send a push message to everyone with a wallet pass?

No. Leat doesn't let you send your own message to wallet pass holders, not to everyone and not to a selection of contacts, and that's on purpose. Sending marketing messages through a wallet pass goes against Apple's terms for Wallet passes, and Apple can respond by revoking the ID your passes are signed with. When that happens, every pass you've issued stops working. It also puts you at odds with your contacts' privacy rights.

What Apple's terms say

Every Apple Wallet pass is signed with a pass type ID that Apple issues under its Apple Developer Program License Agreement. That agreement sets the rules for the notifications a pass can show:

  • They may not be used to send people unsolicited messages.
  • They may not be used for advertising, product promotion or direct marketing of any kind, unless the person opted in to it inside an app and can opt out there. A wallet pass has no app around it, so your contacts never gave that consent.
  • The only promotion Apple allows is one directly about the pass itself, like a coupon that's added to that pass.

Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for Wallet say the same about the message a pass shows when it changes: use it for information people need to know, never for marketing.

What happens when the rules are broken

Apple can revoke a pass type ID at any time, for any reason, at its own discretion. Once it's revoked:

  • Every pass already issued with it stops working on contacts' phones.
  • No new passes can be issued with it.
  • The decision is Apple's alone.

For a loyalty program that means every contact loses the card they show at your counter, all at once.

Your contacts' privacy

A contact adds your pass to see their points and to use it at your counter. A marketing message on that pass is something they never signed up for, and privacy law gives them firm rights here:

  • Under the GDPR (Article 21), a person can object to direct marketing at any time, and you then have to stop. You also have to tell them about that right clearly, at the latest in your first marketing message.
  • EU rules on marketing by email, text message and other electronic messages generally require consent first, and an easy way to opt out in every message.

A pass notification has room for none of that. There's no unsubscribe link, and nothing tells you or Leat that a contact wants no more marketing. All a contact can do is switch off notifications for the whole pass, which also stops the updates about their points that they did want.

For what you and Leat are each responsible for under the GDPR, see GDPR and your contacts: what you're responsible for, and how Leat helps.

"Other platforms do offer this"

A wallet pass can't receive a message the way an app can. A platform that lets you message all pass holders does it by changing something on every pass at once, so Apple Wallet shows that change as a notification. To Apple, that's a marketing message sent through the pass, and the merchant whose passes they are carries the risk. That's why Leat doesn't offer it.

When your pass does show a notification

Your pass shows a notification in 2 cases only, and both are about the pass itself:

Both only work in Apple Wallet.

Reaching contacts with a promotion

Send an email campaign. To reach only the contacts who have a wallet pass, build a contact list that filters on wallet passes and send the campaign to that list. See Creating a contact list.

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