Passbook Ready

Passbook is a new application in iOS6. It’s a default app and available for iPhone and iPod touch and it’s all about the extra stuff that you might normally have in your pocket or filling up your fat wallet — things like coupons, loyalty cards or travel tickets.

There has already been a move by a number of companies to produce tickets or coupons for the phone and a lot of the third party applications have taken advantage of barcodes. There are a number of ways but the most common use has been for the user to take action in the real world.  For example:

• Checking in for your flight
• Buying coffee
• Checking in for movie at movie theatre

These are all very novel ways of making things easier for the user and save an abundance of space in your wallet.  But until iOS6 it’s not really been supported by the phone.  You’ve had to fumble around and find the email, or go to the app or maybe even a browser screen.  All that changes with iOS6 and introduction of Passbook.

Passbook Features

Passbook is a single location on your device where these passes can be gathered and accessed very easily in a fun and useful way by the user. It has a nice, clean User Interface that makes browsing for your tickets, coupons, and passes that much easier.  We foresee people adopting Passbook and managing their passes digitally through their phones, while paper coupons are slowly becoming obsolete.

Apple has already done a multitude of modifications to make Passbook mistake proof.  For example, if you’d use a bar code in a safari web page before and try and scan it the screen might rotate or the back light turns off just as you are about to scan.  Passbook solves that deficiency and simplifies, enhances, and provides consumers with the best user experience.

Now beyond just storing your passes, Apple has done a top job at integrating it deeply into the system.  They’ve incorporated it into the lock screen window – which is something that third party apps wouldn’t be able to do.  And that means, as a developer or merchant you can put your pass on the lock screen in front of the user at a time or a location that’s most meaningful from them. To illustrate, right when your customer walks through the doors of your outlet, their store card automatically appears on their lock screen, and with the swipe of a finger, the pass is opened and ready for use.

Passbook Push Notifications

Another huge feature of the passes can be targeted with push notifications.  Because of Passbook’s time and location enabled capabilities, businesses can send push notifications to clients within a certain area of their outlet.  For example, a consumer walking by a coffee shop could receive a notification informing them of a 10% discount on all coffees.  This takes mobile marketing to an entirely different level.  What’s more is that passes can be updated in real time. If your flight is delayed, you’ll be notified of the change and your travel ticket will be updated to reflect the new flight time.  The power of push notifications and real time updates is just another added Passbook benefit.

Forget bulky wallets and fumbling around for the right pass.  The time for digitalized passes, tickets, coupons, and cards is now, and Passbook is just that application for enhancing and simplifying the lives of consumers and businesses.