Wallet pass creation
- PassKit
- Yes
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Both put a card in Apple and Google Wallet
Compare
A pass is not a payment
PassKit is good at what it does: creating and distributing Wallet passes, keeping them updated, and getting them onto phones. What it does not have is a ledger — and once a card needs a balance that can be charged, that is the whole product.
Updated
At a glance
- PassKit
- Wallet pass creation and distribution
- 7Konto
- Closed-loop payments with a ledger
- Overlap
- Both put a card in Apple and Google Wallet
- Divergence
- Anything involving money moving
Updated
Where teams usually discover the gap
A loyalty or gift programme starts with passes, because that is the visible part. The card looks right, it updates, and it is in the customer's phone within a week.
Then somebody asks what happens when a customer spends part of the balance at one branch and the rest at another, and whether the two tills can be trusted to agree. That is a ledger question, and a pass platform does not answer it.
The work that follows — authorisation, reconciliation, refunds, limits, settlement per merchant — is most of a payment platform, and it is the part PassKit deliberately leaves to you.
- A number printed on a pass is not a balance until something guarantees it.
- Two tills selling against the same card need an authority to settle between them.
- Refunds, partial redemption and expiry all need the same authority.
Side by side
Where the two products actually differ.
Transaction ledger
- PassKit
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Without one, a balance is a display value
Real-time authorisation
- PassKit
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Two tills cannot otherwise be trusted to agree
POS terminal flow
- PassKit
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Spending has to happen somewhere
Online checkout
- PassKit
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- The same balance, on the merchant's site
Corporate accounts and limits
- PassKit
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- B2B2E needs rules enforced at authorisation
Settlement per merchant
- PassKit
- No
- 7Konto
- Yes
- Why it matters
- Multi-merchant programmes need it from day one
Choosing between them
If the card carries no money
A pass platform is the simpler and cheaper answer, and there is no reason to add a ledger you will not use.
If the card carries a balance
The ledger is not an add-on to the pass; it is the product, and the pass is how customers reach it.
If you already run passes
Migrating is usually issuing new cards rather than converting old ones, which is a campaign rather than a project.
Questions about this
What is a closed-loop payment platform?
It lets you issue and process payments inside your own ecosystem — gift cards, prepaid balances, employee accounts — without routing every transaction through Visa, Mastercard or a bank. The funds stay in your system, so the fees, the data and the customer experience are yours to set.
How is 7Konto different from PassKit or Badge?
Those are Wallet pass products: they distribute passes, they do not process payments. 7Konto is a closed-loop payment platform with a ledger, transaction processing, POS integration, an online checkout widget and PSP embedding. A card issued here carries a real balance that is charged in real time.
Is this the Starbucks model?
The same economics, without the app. Starbucks built a custom application customers had to install, and holds a very large prepaid float as a result. 7Konto delivers the closed-loop side of that through Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, so there is no app to develop and no install step to lose people at — and through PSP embedding it extends to a whole merchant portfolio rather than one brand.
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