The next great iPhone software is still in beta mode right now, but we’re already excited about digitizing some of the crap in our wallets via Passbook—and for frequent travelers, it’ll be a godsend. Check out the future:
https://gizmodo.com/passbook-is-the-beginning-of-mobile-payments-on-ios-5917474
The video experiment above comes from PassK.it, a company that hopes to make money helping other companies create cards for your iPhone wallet—gift vouchers, airline passes, sandwich of the month clubs, etc. Passkit’s lead developer (and his adorable daughter) gave the system a spin by replicating boarding passes for Thai Airways in the hopes that no old fashioned paper documentation would be needed to fly.
The experiment failed—Hong Kong International Airport wasn’t ready for paperless jet-setting.
Scanning travel passes from a phone is nothing new, but consolidating all of your papers and passes and tickets into one central, graceful app is a novelty. A novelty that doesn’t work yet, but if a little girl can handle the gist of it, then Apple’s done something right. Now the rest of the planet just needs to do it right too.
