Terminology

Pass Issuer

The Pass Issuer is the entity that's responsible for the passes, owns the passes, and issues them to their customers. This can include you, the developer, or the organization that you represent.

To become a Pass Issuer, you must first register as an Issuer.

Pass class

A Class can be thought of as the template for the pass. It contains consistent attributes for each pass that Issuers create for users. An Issuer can create multiple classes, each with their own distinctive style and appearance.

In addition to style and appearance, Classes can enable additional features like Smart Tap, and the Enrollment and Sign In.

Pass Object

An Object is an instance of a Class. For each customer that receives a pass, create a new Object instance.

Pass Class

Pass Classes describe general information for related Pass Objects, such as style and appearance, but don't include customer details.

Other types of Pass Classes include:

  • Boarding pass
  • Event tickets
  • Gift cards
  • Offers
  • Transit passes
  • COVID cards

Pass Object

A Pass Object is a type. Like Objects, a Pass Object is an instance of a correspondent Pass Class. For each customer that's issued a pass, create a Pass Object.

Pass Objects contain customer-specific information. For example, not only can we use them to identify that a customer has a ticket for a flight, the Pass Object can also indicate their assigned seat on the flight.

Service account

The service account is the identity that we use to call the Google Wallet API. We recommend that you grant this service account permission to access the Google Wallet API.

Service account

The service account key is the credential used to authenticate your application as the service account. The service account key is considered highly sensitive and needs to be kept private. If a third party accesses the service account key, they can identify themselves as the service account and perform actions awarded to someone with those credentials.