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iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet

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Why This Matters

Apple's iOS 27 introduces a groundbreaking 'Create a Pass' feature in Wallet, empowering users to generate and customize passes without developer credentials or signing certificates. This shift simplifies pass creation, enhances user control, and could foster a new wave of third-party tools and personalized digital passes, impacting both developers and consumers in the digital wallet ecosystem.

Key Takeaways

After 14 years of waiting on developers to ship Wallet support, Apple is letting users do it themselves. Here is what Bloomberg is reporting, how the new flow works, and what it means for third-party tools like WalletWallet.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported on Monday that iOS 27 will add a "Create a Pass" feature to the Wallet app. Tap the "+" button you already use to add credit cards or pass emails, and Wallet will offer something it has never offered before on iPhone: a path to build your own pass. You can scan a QR code on a paper ticket or membership card with the camera, or build a pass from scratch in a layout editor. The whole flow runs without an Apple Developer account, a Pass Type ID, or any certificate signing. iOS 27 is expected to preview at WWDC on June 8, with a public release in September.

How the new flow works Reporting from Bloomberg, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, and AppleInsider lines up on the same workflow. Inside the Wallet app, the existing "+" button gains a new option for creating a pass. From there you choose between two starting points: Scan a QR code from a paper card, ticket, or screen

Build a custom pass from scratch with no scan needed Once you are in the editor, Wallet exposes adjustable styles, images, colors, and text fields. The reports describe a fairly conventional template-driven layout, closer in spirit to what Pass2U, WalletWallet, and other third-party generators have offered for years than to Apple's developer-only PassKit pipeline.

Three templates, color-coded Apple is testing three starting templates, each tied to a default color: Standard (orange): the default for any general-purpose pass.

the default for any general-purpose pass. Membership (blue): geared toward gyms, clubs, libraries, and other recurring-access cards.

geared toward gyms, clubs, libraries, and other recurring-access cards. Event (purple): meant for tickets to games, movies, and one-off occasions. The color choice is not just decoration. Wallet currently sorts passes visually in the stack, and the template hue is what sets each card apart at a glance, so a quick look is enough to pick out the orange punch card from the purple ticket without reading a word.

Why now: 14 years of PassKit drought Apple shipped PassKit alongside iOS 6 back in 2012. The pitch was clean: businesses build .pkpass files, customers tap to add, everyone wins. In practice, the consistent adopters ended up being airlines, big-box retailers, ticketing platforms, and a handful of national chains. Most gyms, cafes, libraries, rec centers, and small loyalty programs never built one, because the path requires an Apple Developer account, signing certificates, and enough engineering work that "just print a paper card" almost always won the budget conversation. The Next Web's framing is blunt: Apple is no longer waiting on developers. With Create a Pass, the supply-side problem is finally being solved from the demand side. If the business will not build a Wallet pass, the user does it themselves from the QR code that business already printed. That is a meaningful shift in posture. For more than a decade, Wallet has been a directory of what brands chose to ship. In iOS 27 it becomes a directory of what people choose to keep.

What this means for WalletWallet We will be honest. WalletWallet exists because of this exact gap. You take a barcode from any loyalty card, paste it into our web app, pick a color, and a free Apple Wallet pass lands on your phone in about a minute, all from the browser without an account or any developer setup. Once Create a Pass ships in September, a chunk of that workflow moves natively into the iPhone Wallet app. That is good for users. We started this project to make Wallet friendlier for the cafes-and-gyms long tail, and Apple agreeing with us at OS-level scope is a healthy outcome. The category needed it. A few places where we still help, even after iOS 27 ships: Google Wallet. Create a Pass is iPhone-only. Roughly half of the wallet-using world is on Android, and our generator builds Google Wallet passes from the same form.

Web, no OS upgrade. iOS 27 needs a compatible iPhone and the September update. WalletWallet runs in any browser today. iOS 14, iPad, Mac, a friend's laptop, all fine.

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