What Apple’s Passbook Can Do for You

Did you pre-order the iPhone 5? Are you planning to order one? You probably know that this will come with iOS 6 but are you familiar with the new app called Passbook?

Passbook is exactly that. It stores all your important stuff such as coupons, boarding passes, loyalty cards and tickets. This app makes your iPhone aware of where you are so if you go to the airport, it will automatically show you your boarding pass. Gone are the days of rummaging through your purse or bag for your boarding pass. Another great way of using Passbook is by paying for your food or refreshments. For example, you go into a Starbucks and you have money stored in your Starbucks tab in your Passbook. You can then pay for your food or drinks by scanning your phone at the available POS.

Passbook is not only great for big companies. As a small business, you can also take advantage of this great app with the help of a company called Tello. Tello is introducing a product called PassTools that can help you build and manage passes for Passbook. You can create coupons or create thousands of passes every single day and you can do all these in minutes. It’s very user-friendly and doesn’t require technical knowledge to be able to create your very first pass.

It features a template builder if you need to create a large number of personalized passes, the PassTools API to manage your passes and a dashboard for you to be able to see the analytics of the passes you’ve created.

PassTools is available to any small business owner for 30 days without a required credit card. All you need is an email address and a password. Without PassTools, you won’t be able to create a pass easily unless you can understand JavaScript Object Notation and you an Apple developer certificate which, by the way, costs $99 annually. Aside from these two there are also a lot more requirements.

With PassTools, you also pay $99 a month but that’s for a basic plan after your 30 days expires and that will already allow you to build 1,000 passes. A premium plan costs $999 per month and will allow you to build 20,000 passes. If you need to do more, you can just negotiate a rate with Tello.

This technology makes shopping, dining and traveling more convenient for both consumers and small business owners. See how your company can benefit from Passbook. As it continues to develop, you will see more and more features that will make your business better.