AppleInsider Staff
Apple on Saturday added a banner to the front page of the Apple Store app which allows customers to buy and send Passbook-ready digital cards via email to family and friends.
The company first announced it would be rolling out Passbook-capable gift cards when the Apple Store app was updated earlier this week, though the digital coupons were difficult to find and did not appear in store-wide searches.
Customers eager to use the service can navigate to a featured gift card banner at the bottom of Apple Store app's homepage. From there, users can select digital certificates for brick-and-mortar Apple Stores, which can be delivered to a physical or email address. iTunes cards are also available, however they can only be delivered by mail.
As of this writing, the color choices are limited to blue, silver and pink, and the value must be within $25 to $2000.
Once delivered, the recipient can either print the email out to take to a store, use it to shop online, or download the card to the iOS Passbook app for storage as a QR code. As seen below, the message comes with an "Add to Passbook" button which, when pressed, directs iOS to Apple's servers where a unique code is generated and sent to Passbook.
Recipient email (left) and corresponding Passbook pass (right).
During the process, Apple allows Passbook to tag the generated Passbook pass with a zip code for use with the geo-fencing feature built into iOS. The system asks if the user would like their iPhone or iPad to open Passbook and display the gift card upon waking near an Apple Store.
The digital gift cards can also be purchased through the Online Apple Store for mail and email delivery.
Marko Zivkovic
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Andrew O'Hara
20 Comments
I know this will make more than a few people happy. Personally I think geofencing is a bit over the top; if you receive a gift you'll be thinking of what to buy and plan on getting to the store to try out a headphone or laptop. But getting an alert while driving by is a bit too much, for me. The QR code has been nicely altered! Good job AI. I would've thumbed-up the article, but can't on an iPad.
Well considering I had to buy one just to show you all, I took the liberty of obscuring it artsy-like.
In that case: keep up the great work!
I'm sure you'll be able to reuse that artwork in next week's inevitable story: "Hackers breach new Apple Digital Gift Card system."
Does this geofencing mean that I can buy vouchers for my relatives in a different country which they can spend only in their country, or does it mean I can only buy vouchers to be sent in the country where I live so I cannot send any to my relatives back home, in the same way as iTunes does?