An App Clip is Apple's answer to "use the app without installing the app": a small slice of an iOS app, capped in size so it opens in seconds, launched from a QR code, an App Clip Code, an NFC tag or a link. It handles one focused task, renting a scooter, paying for parking, joining a program, and then offers the full app afterwards. Introduced in iOS 14, it requires the merchant to build and maintain it as part of an iOS app.
In a loyalty context, App Clips show up as an enrollment route: scan a code at the counter, a signup card slides up, and the flow can end with a pass added to Apple Wallet. That final step is ordinary add to wallet; the App Clip is the container the form runs in, not the pass itself.
The trade-offs are platform and upkeep. An App Clip runs only on iPhone, so the same counter always needs a second path for Android. Traditionally it also exists only if the merchant ships and maintains an iOS app for the clip to belong to, which puts it out of reach of most loyalty programs.
Stell removes that second constraint. Hosted onboarding runs as an App Clip on iPhone, opening in seconds with nothing for the customer to install and no iOS app for the merchant to build or maintain, and falls back to the same hosted web form on every other device. It opens from a scanned code or from an NFC tag, so a poster with a tag behind it joins someone to the program when they hold their phone near it, with no camera and no aiming. One QR code, every phone, ending in a pass in whichever wallet the member carries.
A pass and an App Clip can also point at each other. A pass can link to an associated app on its back, and an App Clip can issue a pass, so programs that already have an invested iOS app sometimes run both. For programs without one, the App Clip join flow on Stell delivers the install-free experience App Clips promise, without the app they normally require.