Wallet’s Create a Pass Lets You Digitize Any Card Without Developer Help

Published by Carl Sanson on June 23, 2026June 23, 2026

What You Need to Know

Apple’s “Create a Pass” feature lets users digitize physical cards into Wallet without developer involvement using Visual Intelligence.
Create a Pass supports three templates—Standard, Membership, and Event—with customizable fields for barcodes, dates, coupon codes, and insurance details.
Feature requires iPhone 15 Pro or newer due to Visual Intelligence technology requirements.
Apple expanded official pass capabilities with richer card styles, tappable actions, and four new barcode format support for developers.

The most interesting angle the source is underplaying: the “Create a Pass” feature quietly solves a real friction point that Apple Pay never addressed, turning physical cards that have no digital equivalent into Wallet-compatible passes using Visual Intelligence. That is the lede.

Most loyalty cards, gym memberships, and event tickets will never get a native Wallet integration. Apple is trying to fix that in iOS 27 with a feature that lets you digitize almost any physical card yourself, no developer required. You scan a barcode or QR code, pick a template, choose a background, and the pass lives in Wallet alongside your credit cards and boarding passes.

The Create a Pass tool supports three templates: Standard, Membership, and Event. Fields can be added or removed to match whatever the physical card contains, with options covering labels, dates, coupon codes, insurance details, VINs, and more. The feature uses Visual Intelligence, which means it requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer to function.

On the developer side, Apple is also expanding what official passes can do. Memberships, gift cards, and rewards cards can now adopt a richer “Poster Generic” card style with full background images and up to two tappable actions at the bottom of the pass. Four new barcode formats are supported: EAN-13, Code 39, Codabar, and ITF. A new Mac app called Pass Designer gives developers a WYSIWYG editor for building passes without writing layout code by hand.

Wallet as a financial dashboard

The Insights feature in iOS 27 extends the Connected Accounts functionality from earlier iOS versions, adding spending summaries, recurring transaction tracking, and account balances. It works with financial institutions that have implemented Connected Cards support, including several UK banks.

Several other features round out the update. Bill splitting via Apple Intelligence lets users photograph a receipt, assign individual items, and calculate tax and tip automatically, with payment through Apple Cash (US only). Order tracking expands to Australia and Canada after launching in the US and UK with iOS 26. Hotel keys now surface trip details and booked activities. A new Tap to Share option lets customers connect directly to a merchant’s iPhone for faster checkout.

Source: iOS 27 Wallet App Gets 7 New Features (macrumors.com)