Pass style

A pass style is the layout family a wallet pass is built on. It decides which fields the pass has, where they sit on its face, and which behaviors the wallet attaches to it. Choosing the style is the first decision in designing a pass.

Apple defines five styles, declared in the pass.json file as a key that holds the pass's fields:

• generic for anything that does not fit another style, such as a membership or access pass.
• storeCard for stored-value and loyalty cards.
• coupon for offers and vouchers.
• eventTicket for tickets to an event.
• boardingPass for travel passes.

Google Wallet does not use the word style. It organizes passes by type, and each type has a class that holds what is shared and an object that holds one holder's pass. The types are generic, loyalty, offer, gift card, event ticket, flight and transit, each with its own class and object resource in the API. The names differ from Apple's, and the sets do not match one for one, so a program that issues to both wallets maps its own pass types onto each wallet's closest match rather than assuming they line up.

The style is more than cosmetics. Each style has its own field layout, such as a header row, a primary field and secondary and auxiliary fields, and each wallet attaches behavior to some of them: event tickets can use the poster layout on Apple Wallet, and relevance hints such as locations and dates change how and when the pass is surfaced on the lock screen.

The style is also not the same thing as the program. One program can issue several kinds of pass, and what a customer calls a loyalty card, a membership or a stamp card may sit on the same underlying style. Stell issues loyalty cards, memberships, gift cards, stamp cards, coupons and offers, event tickets, pickup passes and boarding passes to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet.