Most loyalty programme managers know their engagement numbers are lower than they could be. Fewer know why. This piece makes the case that the gap between enrolled members and reachable ones is not a rewards design problem. It is an access problem, and the wallet pass is the layer that closes it.
Every loyalty programme has two numbers that tell different stories. The enrolled member count is the one that appears in board decks. The reachable base is the members the programme can actually reach when it matters, and it is usually smaller than anyone wants to acknowledge. The gap between them is not a rewards design problem or a data problem. It is an access problem.
Most loyalty programmes have addressed this by building an app. For members who engage with it, the app works well: transaction history, balance updates, personalised offers. If your most loyal customers are using it daily, it is earning its place.
The problem is who that segment actually is. App users in most loyalty programmes are the top tier: customers who were already highly engaged before the app existed. The app did not create their behaviour. It serves it. For the broader enrolled base, the story is different. Across the app market, 71% of users churn within 90 days, according to MoEngage's retention benchmarks. A quarter of all apps are used exactly once after download, according to Buildfire's app industry data. The average consumer actively uses around nine apps per day from a phone that has 39 installed. For a brand loyalty app competing with banking, maps, and messaging for one of those slots, these are not outlier numbers. They are the baseline.
What this means is that a significant portion of any programme's enrolled base is unreachable through the app. They signed up on the web during a checkout and never downloaded it. They installed it, used it twice, and moved on. These are not lost customers. They are members with valid accounts and purchase history sitting in a database with no live connection to the brand. Email reaches some of them occasionally. SMS reaches others when the message is urgent enough. Neither has a persistent presence in the consumer's daily environment.
This is where wallet passes sit, not as a replacement for the app, but in the gap beneath it. The consumer who did not download the loyalty app will often add a wallet pass. The friction is categorically lower: one tap, no password, no app store. The pass lives in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet alongside bank cards and transport passes. For a member who was never going to use the app, this is the access point that actually works.
Once added, the wallet pass operates as a live channel. A notification reaches the lock screen when a reward is available, without the member opening anything. A geo-trigger fires when someone is near a store. The balance updates in real time. Wallet pass notifications run at action rates of 8-20%, against the 0.5-2% typical of loyalty programme email according to Klaviyo's email marketing benchmarks. The gap is not about better creative. It is about where the message lands.
For businesses operating loyalty platforms, this is the capability question increasingly shaping client conversations. If your platform delivers loyalty programmes and wallet pass issuance is not part of your output, every programme you run has this gap built into it. Adding wallet pass capability closes the segment your current stack cannot reach, without requiring you to rebuild what you have.
There is also an operational consideration. Apple and Google update their wallet specifications regularly. Managing those changes, maintaining pass certificates, and keeping infrastructure current is a non-trivial overhead for a platform whose core product is not wallet pass issuance. Integrating with a dedicated pass platform means those updates are handled by specialists who track them as a primary job. Your platform stays current without the engineering cost of owning it.
The strongest loyalty programmes are not choosing between app and wallet pass. The app serves depth for engaged members: rich history, tiered rewards, personalisation at scale. The wallet pass serves reach for the wider enrolled base: a persistent presence, a notification channel, a low-friction re-entry point for the member who lapsed. They serve different parts of the same base.
The loyalty reach problem has never been about finding new customers. The acquisition has already happened. What most programmes have not solved is how to remain present with the 60 or 70 percent of their enrolled base who are not highly engaged but have not left either. That is where most of the long-term programme value is waiting. The wallet pass does not change what the programme offers that segment. It changes whether the programme can reach them at all.
