Digital Membership Card?

Hello Tuan,

Hoping you can help!  Many of our members require a digital membership card that they can download into their Google or Apple Wallets.  The printable PDF's just aren't convenient at all.  I'm experiencing extreme pressure now for the feature - they've been asking for a few years now and I'm not really competent enough to attempt to DIY.

Is there any hope that on the near horizon that we might get an integrated digital member card? Alternatively, are there any extensions that facilitate this?

Membership Pro does everything else we need except the digital cards, but unfortunately it's important enough that we might end up having to looking elsewhere. 

Thanks,
Meryl

Hi Meryl

To be honest, I don't understand exactly how it should work or what needs to be implemented to support that.

Do you have any kind of documentation available ?

Tuan

Hi Meryl

I have just come across this topic reading through the forum.
We are looking at moving to digital membership cards for our members too using apple and google wallets.
I think there is another thread out there where customers of Tuan and Joom Donation have wanted to head in this direction too.
We are not planning on stopping using Membership Pro as it is just too good for us and we love everything about it.
Next week we are starting a free trial with a company called PassKit ( passkit.com/ ) where we can export our member lists each month into excel spreadsheets and upload them to the Passkit software and it will provide each member with their own digital card in their phone wallets.
We think that once a membership date from Membership Pro is expired, their wallet card will become expired too.
There is a small fee per member with Passkit of course but what we have talked with them about, it looks good and will save us a heap of time in producing cards, posting them out and then worrying about faked or expired membership cards in the future.
Have a look at what they offer and I will gladly post an update in a couple of weeks if you want to know how we are going.

The way the data is stored in Membership Pro makes it really easy to export the info each month we think - hope.

Thanks

Chris

Hi again

I just found the other thread that I remember this being discussed in.

joomdonation.com/forum/membership-pro-fe...-android.html#157703

A few of us users had loved the possibility and someone had added resources and info on how the 2 wallets might work (apple and google).

I think the digital wallets is the way forward for membership cards now and it would be great to have an option with Membership Pro but we are going to trial an extra step with the people at Passkit and I will let you know how we find them.

Thanks again

Hi Chris,
We are also looking at Digital Membership cards.
I was just wondering if you had pursued your free trial with Pass Kit, If so how did it go and are you using it?
Any information would be really great.
Thanks
David

Hi David
Apologies for the delay in replying.
Please ask me any direct questions you might have that I don't cover here. I don't mind.
I'm probably putting too much info here all at once too sorry but have a read as you need to and ask me any questions and I will just answer those next time.
Without sounding like a stalker - I have read many of your helpful posts and contributions over my time with JoomDonation and you come across as a smarter person than I am. You will find Passkit easy to use I think and to expand. I'm just trying to put it all down whilst I have the time and also aware we are all over the world and might be a while inbetween replies.

I must first praise Tuan and Joomdonation for what they give us and whilst I would love a digital card solution from them, I have full understanding and support of them that this just might not be possible from them right now and that is fine with me and i am sticking with JoomDonation for membership and events as they are brilliant.

Passkit works with our needs for JoomDonation software and certainly on our budget.

We have gone through our free trial with PassKit and are fully using it for membership cards - we are about 4 months in and have been paying invoices to them for about the same time.
Compared to us posting out our plastic cards as we used to, we are benefitting from significant cost savings across the last 4 months.

The point was raised in another topic post that all the BIG ticketing companies use Digital wallets now and whilst I agree, I'm humble enough to know that is because they have BIG budgets probably too and I don't. And we get so much value from JoomDonation and their products without needing a BIG budget, I don't want to disrespect the work done by Tuan and his team by expecting a solution for this here just yet.

So we priced up merging passkit in with what we use from Joomdonation and we are happy with what we have created so far at the cost.

Where to start?
I spoke with Jesse originally and then Danny from Passkit via a Google meeting online to speak with them directly and to get to talk to each other. They offered an initial meeting online but I then had some doubts and more questions, so it it was no problem to have another virtual face to face a little down the track. I appreciated the opportunity to talk to them direct.

We went through our ideas and requirements first and Danny ran me through the steps i needed to get up and running with a trial with them. He was a really good guy. Very patient, very knowledgable and he had real workable solutions to my examples that I ran past him.

They are very clear with their pricing model. You pay a minimum fee per month of $19.75 USD for up to 250 members and then after that the price per member is measured in cents per person as you go through clearly defined tiers. The next tier is for 251-2500 members and then I think the tier after that is 2501-5000 and then 5000-10000 members.

After my initial online meeting, they offer support through an online chat on their website and again based on your location to theirs, I find them very quick and helpful.
I am in Australia and I think they might be in Asia as mid-morning my time onwards, I get very quick and detailed replies. Don't quote me on where they are though sorry.

Support is mainly from Danny and he is really helpful. I am the type of person who just asks the plainest and dumbest of questions as I don't pretend to know anything (even when I do) and want their expertise to come through on their product.

They have never not helped me. In some cases they have come up with fantastic solutions I would never have conceived.

I'll speak more about that later as I think my way through my experience with them.

The biggest hurdle we had getting started was due to Apple and having an Apple Wallet requirement. You need to pay for an Apple Developer licence through Apple every year (about $100 USD from memory) to be cleared to put things in their wallets.

Again Passkit explained it all and made it as simple as possible but it is a cost to factor in and took the longest amount of time waiting on Apple and a few emails back and forth chasing Apple.
Nothing difficult to complete or understand, just a wait.

My advice would be begin that process with Apple before you start designing your templates and learning the Passkit interface as you can create cards and load members up without it - you just can't launch your cards.

Once through that, we found designing the cards themselves through the passkit website very easy. Frustratingly there is differences between how many fields and how much information can be shown on the different card types. Google Wallet allows more information and better use of the space for design we found but most of our members had Apple phones. The Apple template has a lot of dead space which you cannot use if you don't want to scan the QR code or barcode space.

If you are looking at scanning the cards then they both are very similar.

Danny can advise you which is the best card model to use for your case. We went membership card over loyalty card or event or plane ticket template.

We have tiers to move up with experience based on membership years.

It's a simple template builder task where you layout data fields that match the data fields in your passkit members database area to show on their cards.

You really have to design one for the Apple Wallet and one for the Google wallet (or at least tweak them a bit) but it isn't difficult or really time consuming.

There is also a reason why nearly any phone wallet ticket, member or loyalty card you might have yourself look so similar - it is because all designs are limited to the specs of Apple and Google.

Passkit offer a great variety of functional passes to uses and they all count towards your overall membership numbers.

We only needed a simple membership card with one level shown on but they also offer loyalty cards that register if your customers have had 5 visits or purchases and qualify for a free thing or bonus etc etc.

Adding members into the passkit software is very easy. You can either do it manually one at a time if that is easier or you can update bulk numbers with a csv import.

Very simple and easy to follow from your dashboard.

At this point, my explanation forks a little and it may not apply to your needs here.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with Zapier at all and the services (and costs) that they offer but Passkit ties in some great integration with Zapier that we have really utilised.

To automate our process, we set up a heap of Zaps through Zapier so that whenever we add a new member (from Joomdonation or anywhere else), we add their passkit details to a spreadsheet and that new row record triggers a Zap that creates a record in Passkit without us having to login or touch it, that then sends our member an email through Passkit with their URL for them to download their digital card themselves.

It also then triggers another automated zapier zap to create a new record in another spreadsheet that gives us back their new passkit details including their expiry date and their digital card URL for us without doing anything.

This new information goes back into their JoomDonation record so they can access their URL's themselves going forward without requesting it from us.

I'm sorry if I am not making sense now but because we have their passkit tier, linked to our membership plans and expiry dates now because of the above Zaps, when their plan expires, their digital wallet card also does automatcially for them too.

If they renew or extend their time with us, all we need to do is update a spreadsheet field for them and their card expiry dates instantly changes too.

It is saving us so much time and money in not sending out new cards each time.

We hardly ever login to Passkit now and just update 2 spreadsheet tabs in the same spreadsheet workbook as dates change for them each year.

It is also great that if they change membership plan tier with us, we can update the same spreadsheet row with the new tier and expiry date and their wallet changes instantly for them too.

I am probably throwing too much at once sorry David.

As a basic example of what I am trying to explain now.

We have plan 1 with a Red Card template, we have plan 2 with a blue card template and plan 3 with a green card template.

If David starts on Plan 1 with us, his wallet would be Red and his expiry date and details show for that. If David renews on Plan 1 for another 12months, his card stays the same but the expiry date changes.

If Debbie starts on Plan 1 with us, her wallet card would be Red and her expiry date and details show too. If Debbie upgrades to Plan 2 for the next 12months (or at any time in the year), then her card changes to Blue and her tier moves up and shows her new expiry date.

It works perfectly for us as our cards are membership coaching cards that shows people what level each member is on for job interviews or proof of experience etc.

It is quite complex what can be achieved but easier than I am making it sound. The cards change within a minute of changing anything on them and our members have given us great feedback.

We don't have to post anything out any more and if someone expires, they can clearly see this themselves.

We can actually put messages on their cards, change the template design to advertise upcoming news or events etc.

Please let me know if the above is helpful at all. Sorry it is so big but there is lots you can do and it has really got us to where we needed to be with the digital cards.

It's been a positive move for us and the time we took creating and managing the plastic cards was more than the processes we have now. And cheaper.

HI Chris, I thought I would send a quick reply now, just to say thank you so much for your comprehensive response. I am going to take a bit of time to digest what you have said, before responding.
I totally agree with your comments about JoomDonation and Tuan.. Tuan provides an amazing service, not just to us but all the other users of their products. This is all done for a ridiculously low price which has not changed in 10 years that I have been dealing with them,......outstanding value for money. 
I will come back to you later, once I have had time to digest your response.
Kind regards
David

No problem at all David
I certainly emptied my head in my reply and reading it back - it sounds a little garbled at times sorry.

Please ask me any singular questions whenever you are ready and I will trim my answers to be more focused.

Please consider contacting Passkit directly for that free online meeting maybe. I am that type of person who hates contacting sales for a chat when you probably aren't ready to go with them or really ever going to go with them but then they harrass you over and over again once you've made contact and no matter how may times you say No or Not Yet, it becomes a daily chore to get contact from them. I hate that feeling.

But Passkit are not like that at all. Quite the opposite in fact and I think they will honestly recommend which is the best pass for you usage requirements and they will not chase you up afterwards.

I forgot to explain that I spoke with Jesse in a meeting initially and he guided me to exactly what I needed and how to do it.

But then work being work, other things came up for me and this project got put on pause for over 3 months. I never once received a chase or any follow ups from them at all - it was very refreshing and welcomed.

When I was finally ready to give it all a crack again, I contacted them again and spoke to Danny for the whole process and contacted him a lot more than he contacted me.

You will probably get some get guidance from them and better than I am providing. I explained that I had a Joomla website and how we store the membership info and they suggested all the Zapier zaps to create as they are pre-built for Passkit.

I'll leave things at that and good luck with everything. Please update this forum post if you have any future questions at all.

All the best.