The three causes behind almost every report
Most reports that a wallet loyalty card "is not updating" are not push-delivery failures. Three causes account for nearly all of them: the stamp was never recorded, the pass was never actually added to a wallet, or the phone has not fetched the update yet. Work them in that order and you will close most tickets in under two minutes without opening a server log.
The order matters because each step is cheaper than the one after it, and each one eliminates a whole class of causes. Asking a customer to read their stamp count out loud costs ten seconds. Reading the push queue costs a support engineer. Start at the customer's screen and move toward the server, never the other way.
The steps below are written for Waya cards, but the mechanics apply to any Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass. An Apple pass is a file on the device that gets refreshed from a pass web service. A Google Wallet pass is an object that lives on Google's servers and is read by the app. That single difference decides where a stale card can hide, and it changes what you check.
Step 1: which card, on which phone, right now
Ask one question before anything else: "Can you open the card inside Apple Wallet or Google Wallet and read me the number you see?" Not a screenshot. Not the page they filled in at the counter. The card, inside the wallet app, right now.
A large share of reports end here. The customer scanned the QR code, filled in the one-screen form, saw the pass, and never tapped Add. There is no pass on the device, so there is no device registration, so the server has nothing to push to. The fix is to scan the shop's QR code again and finish the add this time.
Re-enrolling is safe. A Waya card is unique per program and mobile number, so the same number always returns the same card with the stamps it already had. A customer only ends up with two cards at one shop if they typed a different number the second time: a digit typo, or a work number instead of a personal one. If the count they read you is far below the shop's records, ask which number they gave, then check both.
Step 2: does the dashboard show the visit
Now check the same fact from the other end: "Does the dashboard show today's visit?" Open the customer's record in the Waya dashboard and read the visit log. If today's scan is not there, stop. This is not a wallet problem. The stamp was never recorded, so nothing was ever sent.
The question for the cashier is specific: "After you scanned, did the screen show the new total, or did you put the phone away first?" The usual answers are a scan that was opened and abandoned, a stamp that landed on a second customer record created under a mistyped number, or a dead spot in the shop where the phone lost data mid-save. All three look identical to the customer: they walked out with the count they walked in with.
This is the most common cause on the list and the cheapest to fix for good. Have staff turn the phone toward the customer and let them watch the number change before they leave the counter. Two seconds of habit removes the entire category of ticket. Waya has no POS integration, so nothing else in the shop will catch a scan that a person skipped.
Step 3: force the pass to refresh from the phone
If the dashboard has the visit and the wallet card does not, you now have a delivery question. Ask the customer to force a refresh, and be exact about how, because both platforms bury it. On iPhone: open the pass in Apple Wallet, turn it over to the details side, then pull down. iOS asks the pass web service which of its passes changed, downloads a fresh .pkpass, and redraws the card.
On Android: close the pass and open it again in Google Wallet. A Google Wallet loyalty object lives on Google's servers, so what the customer sees is what the server holds. If a reopened Google Wallet card is still stale, the update never reached Google. That is a server-side fault and it should be escalated rather than retried on the phone.
It helps to know what an Apple update actually is. When a stamp is recorded, the server sends a silent background push with an empty body and low priority. The push carries no stamp count at all. It only tells the phone to come and collect the pass, and the phone then has to make two network calls of its own. If the device is offline at that moment, the card stays stale until it is not.
Step 4: the device is the usual bottleneck
Ask: "Is the phone on Wi-Fi or mobile data right now, and is Low Power Mode on?" A low-priority background push is exactly what a phone defers when it is saving battery. A café Wi-Fi network that never finished its sign-in page will block the refresh calls while the phone still shows itself as connected.
Then ask: "Is this the same phone you added the card on?" Apple can sync a pass across a customer's own devices, but the copy they are staring at may be on an old handset, a tablet, or a watch that has not been on a network in days. Have them refresh on the device they carry every day.
One last device question: "Have you ever deleted this card and added it back?" Deleting a pass removes its device registration. Apple then answers 410 Gone for that push token, we stop pushing to it, and the dead registration is cleared out on a nightly cleanup pass. Adding the card again re-registers the device and updates resume, with the stamp total intact.
Step 5: what to check on the server side
Only now is the queue worth opening. Recording a stamp on Waya enqueues a push job and immediately wakes the worker, and a scheduled run every 30 seconds catches anything the immediate wake missed. A healthy update is seconds old, not minutes. If a customer refreshed 20 minutes later and still reads the old total, treat it as a failure rather than a delay.
Failed pushes retry on a backoff: roughly 30 seconds, then 2 minutes, 8 minutes, 30 minutes, then every 2 hours. A job that exhausts its attempts is marked dead and lands in the event log instead of vanishing. That log, not the customer's recollection, is what tells you whether Apple accepted the push and when.
When you escalate to us, send six things: shop name, card name, the customer's mobile number, Apple or Google, the exact time of the scan, and whether the dashboard shows the visit. The last field decides which half of the system anyone needs to look at. Send it to [email protected] or over WhatsApp support.
The related ticket: it updated but nothing appeared on the lock screen
A different complaint arrives under the same title: "the card updated but I got nothing on my lock screen." That is expected behavior, not a fault. A stamp update is silent by design. The card changes quietly and the customer reads the new count the next time they open their wallet.
Lock-screen text appears when the merchant sends a wallet message from the dashboard, or when a passive branch-proximity reminder fires. Those are separate actions with their own limits. The free plan includes 100 wallet messages a month and stops there; Growth includes 5,000 a month at 85 SAR. No SMS is involved at any point, and no customer number is handed to a third-party messaging app.
If you are weighing whether wallet cards are worth the support surface, this article is most of it: three causes, five checks, no app for the customer to install, and no till to integrate. You can run the whole thing free up to 100 customers and count how many of these tickets you actually get.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my Apple Wallet loyalty card not showing the new stamp?
Check the merchant's dashboard before blaming the pass, because in most cases the stamp was never recorded at the counter. If the dashboard does show today's visit, open the pass in Apple Wallet, turn it over to the details side, and pull down to force a refresh. If it is still stale after that, the phone was offline when the update arrived, or the pass was deleted and the device is no longer registered.
How long should a wallet pass take to update after a scan?
Seconds, not minutes. On Waya, recording a stamp enqueues a push job and wakes the worker immediately, with a scheduled run every 30 seconds as a backstop. If a customer refreshes 20 minutes later and still sees the old total, treat it as a failure to investigate rather than a delay to wait out.
How do I force an Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass to refresh?
In Apple Wallet, open the pass, turn it over to the details side, and pull down; iOS then re-downloads the pass from the server. In Google Wallet, close the pass and open it again, since that card's data lives on Google's servers rather than on the phone. If a reopened Google Wallet card is still wrong, the fault is server-side and needs escalating.
If a customer deletes the card, do they lose their stamps?
No. Stamps live on the server, not inside the pass file on the phone. The customer scans the shop's QR code again with the same mobile number and the same card comes back with the same total, because a card is unique per program and number. A second, empty card only appears if they enter a different number.
Why did the card update without sending a notification?
Stamp updates are silent on purpose, so the pass changes quietly and the customer sees it the next time they open their wallet. Lock-screen messages are a separate action: the merchant sends a wallet message, or a branch-proximity reminder fires near a shop. The free plan includes 100 of those messages a month.