A Wallet message has one structural advantage over email and social: it appears on the phone’s lock screen, in the same queue as a text message. There is no spam folder and no algorithm deciding whether the customer sees it.

How much “better” that makes it cannot honestly be said, and it is worth knowing why. Nobody measures opens on a Wallet notification — neither Apple nor Google reports back to the sender that the customer opened it. Where you see “80–90% open rates”, that is a delivery figure at best and an unsourced number passed along at worst. What to watch instead is at the end of this article.

How do Wallet notifications work technically?

Every card in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet is a live document. The business can send a card update at any time: change the number of stamps, add a discount, or send a text message.

That update appears to the customer as a push notification right on the lock screen. The customer taps, opens the card, and sees the message or the new status.

No app, no email. A direct connection.

When to send notifications (and when not to)?

Wallet notifications are a powerful tool, but like any tool they can be used badly. Customers who feel overwhelmed delete the card, and with it the whole contact.

Good reasons for a notification:

The customer reached the halfway point to a reward: “You have 5 of 10 stamps! 5 more and you get a free coffee.”
The customer is one stamp away from a reward: “One more visit and the coffee is on us.”
The customer hasn’t been in for 30+ days: “We miss you! As a thank-you, you get an extra stamp this week.”
A special promotion or holiday: “Today we’re celebrating the café’s birthday. Come in for a free dessert.”
The customer has a full card and can redeem a reward.

When not to send a notification:

Every week with no specific reason
The same content repeatedly
Outside opening hours

Who actually receives the message

Before you worry about the content, you need to know that some cardholders will not get the message at all — and it is not your fault.

An Apple Wallet card is in good shape: once the customer saves it, the device registers and messages arrive. With Google Wallet it happens that the card exists, the customer has it, but no device is registered against it. The push then has nowhere to land.

In our data that is roughly a third of targeted cards. The exact figures are below. The practical consequence is simple: expect the real reach of a campaign to be lower than the number of cards issued, and do not judge the result by how many people you sent it to.

How to segment customers without complexity?

Not all customers are the same. The Wallet system enables segmentation by behavior:

New customers (1–3 stamps): welcome them and explain how the program works
Active customers (regular visits): reward loyalty with extra bonuses
Dormant customers (30+ days without a visit): send a special offer to reactivate
VIP customers (repeatedly redeem rewards): invite them to exclusive events

Communication targeted this way doesn’t feel like spam; it feels like a service.

What our own data shows

Here are figures from Walio in production instead of general claims. They are aggregates with no personal data, and each one says what it means and what it does not.

Delivery

Period 10 June – 13 September 2026, 397 campaigns:


Targeted	3,756 messages
Delivered	2,538 (67.6%)
Google cards with no registered device	1,137

The 67.6% on its own would mislead. Adding the cards that could not receive the message accounts for 97.8% of sends. Read it as: messages reach devices capable of receiving them almost every time — but a significant share of Google cards has no such device.

Effect on visits

This is only measurable for messages aimed at inactive customers. For the rest, the automation fires shortly after a visit, so a before-and-after comparison says nothing.

For reactivation messages (228 sends in the same period), a visit followed within seven days for:

6.6% of cards in the week before the send
19.7% of cards in the week after

So roughly one in five inactive customers came back within a week.

What this is not: proof that the message caused it. There is no control group — the cards were selected precisely because they were inactive, and some would have returned anyway. Treat it as an order-of-magnitude indication, not a measured uplift. The sample is also small and covers three months.

What to watch instead of open rates

When opens cannot be measured, what remains is the only thing worth money: how many people came in during the week after a campaign. That is measurable, it is decisive, and it is covered in is your loyalty program working.

The key is not how many notifications you send but how relevant they are. One message at the right moment is worth more than ten sent at random.

How to use Wallet notifications without spam: a practical guide