Active customers and active passes
The two counts Walletap keeps about your passes — what each one means, what counts, what never counts and where you see them.
Walletap keeps two counts about the passes you issue, and they answer different questions. Active customers measure this month's activity, and paid plans include a monthly allowance of them. Active passes measure which passes are live in someone's hands right now, and plans billed per pass are billed on them. The figures for each plan are on the price list.
At a glance#
| Active customers | Active passes | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers | Did this pass do something this month? | Is this pass live in someone's hands now? |
| Period | A calendar month, in UTC | Continuous; billing uses the peak of each billing period |
| A pass counts | Once a month, however often it is used | For as long as it stays active |
| Used for | The monthly allowance on paid plans | Plans billed per active pass |
| Shown in | SettingsBilling, Active customers | SettingsBilling, Active passes |
The free plan uses neither. It includes a fixed number of passes in total, counting every pass ever issued on the account.
Active customers#
What counts#
A pass becomes an active customer for the month the first time, in that month, it:
- is issued, whether through the sign-up page, by you, by an import or over the API;
- collects stamps or points, or has a balance added or used;
- has a reward redeemed;
- is scanned or checked in and the scan is valid, whether in the mobile app, at the front desk or at a door.
Each pass counts once a month. Maya Chen's Coffee Card is one active customer in November whether she visits once or twenty times.
What never counts#
- Event tickets and access badges, whatever happens to them.
- Notifications and campaign messages sent to a pass.
- Editing a pass's details without collecting or redeeming anything.
- A scan that is refused, for example of an expired or invalidated pass.
Months#
Months are calendar months in UTC. In Central Europe, a stamp given just after midnight on the 1st falls in the previous month.
Your allowance#
Each paid plan includes a number of active customers a month for every location it covers, and locations that run memberships include more. The allowance is pooled across the account, so a quiet location's spare room covers a busy one.
You can follow the count in three places:
- SettingsBilling shows Active customers for this month against your allowance. The bar changes colour once you reach 80%.
- Once the month goes over the allowance, a banner across the dashboard says so. You can dismiss it for the rest of the month.
- In the mobile app, SettingsBillingPlan & billing shows Active customers this month.
When new cards pause#
If the account had more active customers than its plan includes in each of the last two complete calendar months, new cards pause:
- Issuing a new pass is refused in the dashboard, the apps and the API, with the message "New cards are paused. This account had more active customers than its plan includes in each of the last two months. Existing cards keep working."
- Your sign-up page tells people: "Sign-ups for this card are paused right now. Please ask a member of staff."
- Over the API the refusal is a
402withcode: "upgrade_required"andreason: "active_customers_paused". See Errors.
A pause only stops new cards. Collecting, redeeming and scanning are never limited, and every pass already issued keeps working.
The pause is judged against your allowance today, so it lifts the moment you add locations or move to a plan that covers your usage. The owner sees an Add locations button on the billing card while new cards are paused.
These are never paused:
- event tickets and access badges;
- a pass issued when a customer buys a membership on one of your own membership plans, on an account that runs memberships;
- accounts billed per active pass, or under a contract with Walletap. Their usage is still shown.
Months before November 2026 never count towards a pause.
Active passes#
Definition#
A pass is active when all of these are true:
- It has reached a person. It is in at least one wallet, or it has been scanned at least once.
- It is valid. It has not been invalidated.
- It has not expired. Its native Valid until date, if it has one, has not passed.
- It has started. Its start date, if it has one, has arrived. A frozen membership has a start date in the future, so it is not active while the freeze lasts.
- It is a wallet pass. A physical card is never an active pass.
What is never an active pass#
- A pass nobody added to a wallet and nobody scanned.
- A frozen membership, for as long as it stays frozen.
- An expired pass. It stops counting on its own, with nothing to cancel.
- An invalidated pass, even if it is still in someone's wallet.
- A physical card.
Why a scan counts as reached#
Wallets do not always report that a pass was added: Apple and Google occasionally drop the message. A pass that has been scanned is proof that a person is holding it, so a scan counts, and you are not billed differently because a wallet's report went missing.
Why billing uses the peak#
On a plan billed per active pass, the invoice uses the highest number of active passes during the billing period, not the number on its last day. Clearing passes just before the period closes does not lower that period's bill, so the invoice reflects the most the platform carried for you.
Where you see it#
In SettingsBilling:
- On a plan billed per active pass, Peak active passes shows this period's peak against what the plan includes, and the live count when it is lower.
- On a plan with unlimited passes, Active passes shows the live count.
- The Active passes chart shows the peak for each day or calendar month, over the last 90 days, 6 months or 12 months.