A wallet pass is the loyalty card your customers keep, because there is nothing to install and nothing to delete. An app has to win a place on the home screen first, and about half of app installs are gone within the month.
The difference is this: an app can only work for the customers who keep it, and far fewer customers keep it.
How many customers keep a loyalty app?
AppsFlyer's App Uninstall Report, 2025 edition, puts 46.1 percent of app installs uninstalled within 30 days in 2024, slightly better than the 46.9 percent it recorded for 2023. The figure covers 2.2 thousand apps and 1.3 billion installs across the top 40 markets, and it is Android only, because iOS uninstall tracking is limited after iOS 15. That last detail matters: nobody has a clean equivalent iPhone number, so the honest statement is that roughly half of Android installs are gone inside a month and the iOS picture is unmeasured.
Apply that to a loyalty program and the arithmetic is unforgiving. Every customer has to find the app, install it, create an account and remember it exists, and about half of the ones who complete that are gone within the month. The program is not competing with a competitor's program at that point. It is competing with the home screen.
What is a wallet pass? Apple and Google's own words
Apple's developer documentation lists store cards as one of its pass types and defines them as "store loyalty cards, discount cards, points cards, and gift cards", adding that "if an account related to a store card carries a balance, the pass can be updated to display the current balance". A loyalty card is not a workaround on this platform. It is a documented pass type with a balance field.
Google documents the same object on its side: "loyalty cards let users redeem and use their points more efficiently through a given loyalty program", built by combining a pass class with a pass object. Both wallets ship on the phone, and neither asks the customer to install anything to hold a card.
App or wallet pass: which one stays on the phone?
| Capability | Loyalty app | Wallet pass |
|---|---|---|
| Getting it onto the phone | Store visit, install, account | One tap, no account |
| Still there in a month | About half, on Android | Stays until the customer removes it |
| Showing a balance | Yes, when opened | Yes, on the pass itself |
| Ordering, catalogue, account area | Yes | No |
| Rich two-way messaging | Yes | A short message on update |
| Works with no data plan at the till | Usually needs a connection | The barcode is on the pass |
| Cost to build and maintain | Ongoing development | Included in the platform |
The row that decides it is the second. Every other capability only counts on a phone that still has the card, and the pass is the one that stays.
Most customers use the card within an hour of adding it
Production aggregates measured on 4 September 2026 across external accounts, with the sample stated: 255 enrolled cards, of which one restaurant accounts for 213, or 84 percent.
In Fideliya's data on 4 September 2026, of the 186 cards ever scanned, 165 were first scanned within an hour of the customer adding the card, which is 89 percent, in a sample where one restaurant is 84 percent of the holders. Within 24 hours the figure is 180 of 186. Enrolment and the first scan are the same moment: the customer adds the card at the counter and it is used immediately, with no install standing between the two.
The wallet split across those 255 cards is 131 Apple to 124 Google, close enough to even that issuing one and not the other would leave about half of customers out. Fideliya issues both from the same pass design, which is the practical reason the choice does not have to be made.
Do I need an app at all?
Before the criteria, one thing the table above understates. The uninstall figure is a rate on installs, and installs are already the survivors of a longer funnel. A customer has to be asked, agree, find the right app among similarly named ones, wait for a download on shop wifi, and create an account, all while standing at a counter with a queue behind them. Every one of those steps loses people before the install that the 46.1 percent is measured against. The pass route has one step: tap, and the card is saved.
An app is the right answer when the customer already opens it for something else. A chain with delivery, a gym with class booking, a coffee brand with mobile order-ahead: the loyalty layer rides on an app that has its own reason to exist, and adding a wallet pass on top of it is optional rather than necessary.
An app is the wrong answer when loyalty is the only reason to install it. That is the case for most single-site businesses, and it is the case the uninstall figure above describes. The decision is not which technology is better in the abstract, it is whether the business has enough gravity to survive an install.
- Does the customer have another reason to open an app? If not, the pass is the safer route.
- Does the program need a catalogue or an account area? If yes, that is app territory and a pass will not cover it.
- Does the till need to work when the network is slow? A barcode on a pass survives that better than a screen that has to load.
- Is there a development budget for the second year? An app is a maintained product, not a launch.
The costs behind both routes are compared on what loyalty software costs in 2026. The design decision that follows the choice is on how many stamps a loyalty card should have, the published research is on the statistics page, and the first month is on the launch checklist.
Read the uninstall rate as the shape of the gate rather than as your number: it is a population figure across every category of app. The install is a gate the pass does not have, and it costs the most for the businesses with the least pull.
Sources
AppsFlyer, App Uninstall Report, 2025 edition, Android, top 40 markets. Apple, Wallet for Developers, for the store card definition. Google, Google Wallet loyalty cards. All three retrieved on 4 September 2026. Fideliya's own figures are production aggregates measured the same day, with sample sizes stated.
Fideliya is wallet-native loyalty program software for small businesses. Customers add a stamp or points card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet in one tap, with no app to download and no account to create. Fideliya runs stamps, points, gift cards and referrals on one platform in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Arabic with full right-to-left support, and the free plan issues a real wallet pass for up to 20 customers. The no-app route is described on loyalty program without an app, and the plans are on the pricing page.