Wallet settings, explained

Settings → Wallet. This puts a member’s card into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, so it sits beside their bank cards instead of being a page they have to find. It is the most fiddly setup in Pavilion, and it is genuinely optional — the membership card in the app works perfectly well without any of it.

🍎 Apple Wallet

Apple requires a paid developer account (£79 a year) and a signing certificate. There is no way round it: Apple will not display a pass that has not been signed by an account it recognises. Five things go in here, all from that account — the pass type identifier, the team id, the pass certificate, its private key, and Apple’s own intermediate certificate.

Certificates expire, usually after a year. When one does, existing passes stay on phones but no new ones can be issued — so the fault shows up as “it stopped working for new members” rather than as anything obviously certificate-shaped. Put the expiry date in the club diary.

🟢 Google Wallet

Free, and rather less trouble: a Google Cloud project with the Wallet API turned on, and a service account with the issuer role. Three things go in — the issuer id, a class suffix and the service account’s email and key.

🧪 Test before telling anybody

Both panels have a button that issues a pass to your own phone. Use it. A wrong certificate produces a pass that simply refuses to add, with no explanation on the phone, and finding that out from a member is a poor way to learn.

💡 Is it worth it?

For most clubs, honestly, not at first. Get the members’ app in front of people and the card working there. Wallet is a nice touch for a club where members already have the app and use it — it is not what persuades anybody to start.

Common questions

Do we need both?

No. They are independent, and a club with mostly Android members can do Google alone at no cost. Members on the other platform keep the card in the app.

What happens when the Apple certificate expires?

Passes already on phones keep working; new ones cannot be issued until it is renewed. Renew in the developer account and paste the new certificate here.

Does the card update when a member renews?

Yes — the pass is updated rather than reissued, so their expiry date changes on the card they already have.

We cannot get it working.

It is nearly always the private key: it has to be the unencrypted PEM, and the command shown on the page is the one that produces it. A key that still has a passphrase on it fails silently.