Journal · Brand
Apple just redesigned the loyalty card already sitting in your customer's phone
Apple's Wallet redesign, arriving this September with iOS 27, puts a clickable button on the front of every loyalty and stamp card, fixing the one reason nobody used them.
I picked up a paper stamp card at a coffee shop on Mass Ave last week. Buy nine, get the tenth free. The stamp was a little chicken rubber stamp that looked older than the barista holding it. The card works. It also lives in a wallet next to three gift cards, a library card, and a receipt from 2024, and its odds of surviving the next load of laundry are about even.
Apple wants that card in a phone instead, and this fall it is finally giving shop owners a real reason to put it there.
At WWDC 2026 in June, Apple announced the biggest redesign of Wallet passes in years. Two changes matter if your shop has any kind of loyalty card, membership, or gift card: passes can now use a full photo background instead of a thin strip of color and a logo, and a new feature called Featured Actions puts a clickable button directly on the front of the card. Both roll out in September 2026 with iOS 27.
What was broken about Wallet cards until now
A Wallet pass has always shown a barcode, a logo, and a couple of text fields. Everything else, links, offers, extra information, sat on the back of the card. Almost nobody flips a Wallet pass over. Customers add the card once, open it at the register to scan the barcode, and never touch it again. Passcreator, a company that builds these cards for other businesses, says this exact complaint has come from customers for years: the useful part of the card was invisible.
What does a Featured Action do?
A Featured Action is a button that sits below the barcode, visible the moment the card opens. It has an icon, a short label, and one job: open a link or drop a pin in Apple Maps. For a shop, that turns a dead card into a small billboard.
| Card type | Featured Action example | What the customer sees |
|---|---|---|
| Digital stamp card | "Current offers" | This week's special, no extra tap |
| Membership card | "View benefits" | What their membership includes |
| Gift card | "Check balance" | Remaining balance without a phone call |
| Event pass | "View schedule" | The day's lineup, right on the card |
None of this requires the customer to download anything new. Apple says a shop can upgrade an existing pass in place, so customers never have to re-add the card.
The card finally has room for your brand
Until now, the design options on a Wallet card were a background color, a logo, and a fixed grid of text, which made every card look like a demo screen with someone's name typed into it. The new full-bleed photo layout means the card can look like the shop it belongs to: a bakery's card can show its pastry case, a bookstore's card can show the shelf by the register. Google rolled out its own Wallet redesign starting in April 2026, so both platforms now treat the loyalty card as a real design surface.
Should your shop switch from paper to a Wallet pass?
If your loyalty program is a hole-punched card or a stamp on a receipt, moving it into Wallet is a smaller project than it sounds like, and this redesign is a good reason to time it for fall. A few starting points, with real pricing:
| Tool | Starting price | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Loopy Loyalty | $25/month | Single-location stamp cards, no coding |
| Passcreator | Free for under 5 active passes, $9/month past that | Loyalty cards, coupons, event tickets |
| Square (built-in) | Included if you already use Square for payments | Shops already on Square hardware |
None of these require a developer. All of them export a card a customer can add to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet with one tap from a link, a QR code on your counter, or a text message.
A stamp card only earns its spot in a wallet if someone opens it without being asked.
A barcode nobody looks at twice can now carry a logo, a photo, and a button people notice. Whether it is worth a Tuesday afternoon setting up depends on how many stamp cards you are reprinting each month, and how many of last year's cards are sitting in a junk drawer instead of a customer's pocket.
Sources
| # | Source | What it backed up |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What's New in Wallet: WWDC 2026, Apple Developer | Primary Apple session announcing Rich Styles and Featured Actions for Wallet passes. |
| 2 | Apple Wallet Design Update 2026: New Layouts, Featured Actions, and What's Changing for Businesses | Rollout timeline (September 2026, iOS 27), Featured Action use-case examples, and the "customers don't flip the card" complaint. |
| 3 | Google Wallet Update and Redesign 2026 | Confirms Google's own Wallet redesign has been rolling out since April 2026. |
| 4 | Loopy Loyalty pricing | Pricing range ($25 to $95/month) for a no-code Wallet stamp card tool. |
| 5 | Passcreator pricing | Free tier for under 5 active passes; $9/month Starter plan above that. |
Moving a punch card into Wallet is the kind of small, brandable project we help shops with alongside bigger builds, and September is a fine time to start.