Save Time. Enhance Security.
Modernize your access control with remote management and useful integrations.
Add your corporate employee badges to Apple Wallet, then just tap to unlock with your iPhone or Apple Watch.
Read this guide to get an overview of:
For more information about the Apple Wallet Access Program, please see Apple’s resources here.
Modern access control companies offer various ways of unlocking your office doors with iPhone. For instance, Kisi users can choose between three convenient access methods to unlock Kisi-secured doors with their iPhone.
Unlocking the door with a simple tap on the right door in the Kisi app is possible even without Kisi readers installed at the door. With Tap to Unlock, users simply tap their iPhone against the Kisi Reader Pro to unlock.
For a completely contactless experience, users keep their iPhone in the bag or pocket and unlock with a hand wave in front of the Kisi Reader Pro, thanks to Kisi’s MotionSense technology.
Employee badges in Apple Wallet are a fairly new upgrade in the access control world. Read on to find out how they work and why they will become an access control must-have.
Here is an overview of credentials Kisi currently provides:
Apple Wallet offers an experience upgrade that mobile users have been looking for. It also improves safety and security as well as operational efficiency for admins. Here are 10 advantages of using Apple Wallet for corporate access cards:
1. Get in faster with your iPhone. With Express Mode, you don’t need to wake or unlock your iPhone or Apple Watch to use your access control badge in Apple Wallet.
2. Your employee badge. Now with less badge. With your employee badge in Apple Wallet on your iPhone or Apple Watch, you can enter and leave your office without your physical keys or access cards. That’s one less thing to carry. No more downloading separate apps to unlock different doors. Similar to Airplane tickets, your access badges can co-exist in your Apple Wallet.
3. Custom branded access badges: Apple Wallet allows for natively designed corporate badges that can be easier customized than any app.
4. Get in faster with your Apple Watch. Allows you to leave the phone in your pocket and unlock the door in a second with your Apple Watch. Apple Wallet syncs keys across your devices with the same iCloud accounts so you don’t have to download them twice.
1. Get into your building, even when your iPhone needs a charge. If your iPhone battery has run out, your badge in Apple Wallet will still work. Power Reserve provides up to five hours of access, so you can still get inside. (source)
2. Suspend access privileges. If a user misplaces their iPhone or Apple Watch, they can use the Find My app to lock and help locate their device and suspend their key or remotely erase the device and its keys.
Lost Apple Watch or iPhone? No need to access the access management system or - app or even call your administrator. Simply go to your Find My app and remove the credential from the device remotely.
3. Badge security, built into iPhone. Employee Badges in Apple Wallet take full advantage of the privacy and security features built into iPhone and Apple Watch. They are stored on the device, which means Apple doesn’t see the places your employees or tenants access, so data is private and secure.
4. Advanced security with biometrics. Additionally, card readers can use Face ID or Touch ID on iPhone to provide additional security for spaces that require it made possible with terminal requested authentication (TRA).
Save Time. Enhance Security.
Modernize your access control with remote management and useful integrations.
When your staff or tenants use their iPhone or Apple Watch to get access, it means fewer plastic cards need to be printed—saving money and reducing the use of plastic. But there is more. We summarized the reasons of benefits Apple Wallet has over physical cards in three categories: user experience, operational efficiency, and increased security:
User Experience
Operational efficiency
Increased security
Mobile access technology has been around for a while. Why is now the time for it? As we’ve outlined, Apple Wallet brings new benefits to access control, but is the market ready yet? We’ve asked experts, analyzed our own users’ behavior and willingness to adopt mobile technology, and looked at market studies around proptech investments and ESG sentiment.
We’ve asked a few of our partners and clients about their opinion of using Apple Wallet for access control - from access control experts, to integrators, property managers, coworking leaders and workplace platforms - the consensus seems to be that Apple Access is where the future of access control is headed:
The Apple Wallet experience reigns supreme, easily understandable even for those unacquainted with emerging technologies. Within commercial real estate, the aspiration is to harness Apple Wallet's potential beyond locking and unlocking or being a card in your phone. Integrating features that enhance operational efficiencies, such as streamlining workflows and generating revenue through payment integration, aims to establish a ubiquitous hospitality-like encounter in every workspace, residence, and destination. Inevitably, Apple Wallet will evolve into a universal tool for all. Hence, why not embark on embracing its benefits today?
Lee Odess, the independent go-to voice for the access control and smart lock industry and CEO of the Access Control Executive Brief
A guiding principle that I hold closely within the realm of real estate technology is the imperative need for us, as developers and operators, to engage tenants on their terms. By gaining a deep understanding of their interaction patterns and technological usage, we can deliver solutions that naturally align with their expectations, effectively shaping the industry's future trajectory.
Apple Wallet represents a paradigm shift, one that propels this ethos further into the forefront of our industry. Tenants now expect the ability to access everything at the click of a button. Credit Card. Transit Fare. Rewards Programs. And now, the key to their apartment. Apple Wallet marks the most significant step in the modernization of access control in the real estate sector in decades.
By incorporating our operations into platforms already used by our residents, we're paving the way for a future where real estate and technology are intrinsically linked. It's an exciting time, indeed.
Mark Zikra, CTO, Property Connect Advisors
Every new tenant signing a lease now requires mobile access - it’s just the easiest way to do it
Commercial Landlord
It will come at one point - it’s the future because it’s Apple.
Access Control Integrator, NYC
Anything that removes barriers to entry is a win for the industry. People want seamless experiences and for everything to just work, Apple is known for that.
Liz Elam, Founder GCUC & Coworking Leader
The coworking and flexible office industries have a huge opportunity to embrace the shift towards hybrid workplaces and embrace the millions of knowledge workers who no longer have access to a company leased office space. But there needs to be a fundamental shift in experience for these customers. In most cases these hybrid customers are not signing up for a membership and going through your well designed member onboarding process. You may never meet them until they book their first day-pass or meeting room, they may come in sporadically, whether booking a day pass once a week or meeting rooms ad-hoc to gather with colleagues. Technology needs to aid coworking operators to provide a delightful experience to hybrid workers as that is key to word of mouth adoption to their colleagues to also book and rebook at your space. This will be enabled by deep integrations into your technology stack with a seamless ‘Guest Access Card’ delivered digitally just in time to provide a delightful experience to your guests, as well as to your community managers. Customers want their experience to be seamless, leveraging native technologies built into smartphones remove friction in the process and allow for time-based reminders to provide reservation confirmation at check-in, but can also provide WiFi credentials, and keyless access when integrated to your access control system. The future is bright for coworking. We as operators and vendors need to step up our game to deliver an amazing experience to meet this opportunity.
Eric Zellhart VP Product, LiquidSpace
At Kisi, we have offered Bluetooth-enabled tap and wave to unlock since 2013. When comparing phone unlocks to card unlocks, 76% of unlocks happen through a mobile experience. This number excludes manual in-app unlocks where users have to press a button in an App. It means that 76% of users are ready to create an account, install an App, enable Bluetooth, give location permission, and so on, to have an amazing access experience. Notably 81% of the mobile unlocks happen on iOS. If users were presented with something easier, faster, and more reliable than the current technology, they would use it.
When comparing mobile based unlock methods used per operating system, it breaks down as follows:
iOS phone based unlock method by type:
Android phone based unlock method by type:
Tenant experience investments are needed to motivate work-from-home employees to return to the office. 75% of real estate companies are looking to at least maintain or increase their technology investments, of which tenant experience is part of.
Today, hybrid work is still keeping offices a little less than half occupied (~44%) in top US markets putting pressure on operators and owners to provide top-of-the-line office space as a tradeoff for departing the comforts of work-from-home. This leads to office owners and investors more often having to consider upgrading existing properties so they won’t have to lease them at a discounted rate.
79% in 2023, up from 59% in 2021, of real estate owners and investors believe the world is at a “tipping point” environmentally. Pre-empting new regulations will lead buildings to require:
Better data: More granular occupancy data derived from access control systems will feed into other systems, such as HVAC and lighting, as an input control data point.
Source (2023)
Once your badge has been added to Apple Wallet, you can unlock your door by holding your iPhone or Apple Watch near the reader. You don’t even need to wake or unlock your device. It’s that simple.
To understand how this works on the backend, we’ll first take a look at the typical access control adjustments you need to do to offer Apple Wallet to your tenants or staff, then explain how corporate badges are added to your phone. Afterward, we’ll discuss how custom employee badges are designed and give an FAQ of the most frequently asked questions about Apple Wallet and employee badges on iPhone.
With your current system, you typically need to replace the card reader with an NFC compatible, Apple certified model. This will allow the pass-through of existing keycard swipes to your current system while being able to also read Apple Wallet badges.
In order for a user to have the best experience without a plastic access card, we need to consider not only what happens at the tenant space but the spaces in the pathway to get there (i.e., amenities, front door, bike room).
Typically a building operator should consider 3 main access levels:
How does this work? This is what we’ll cover in the next chapter: deployment architecture.
When buildings deploy cloud based access control, they typically have two choices:
Let’s take a look at the first option.
A regular building setup is to overlay the existing legacy access control panel with the Kisi Controller Pro to enable cloud managed card access via the existing reader.
Let’s look at the second option that would allow for the use of Apple Wallet for access control of the building.
Buildings typically already have access control and want to add Apple Wallet. The typical deployment scenario is pretty straightforward. Essentially, you keep running your existing system as it is today, but switch the frontend for an NFC compatible reader, then forward the card swipes from existing badges through that new reader to the old system and leverage Apple Wallet to manage the mobile credentials in a credential manager like Kisi.
Although the end-user application seems simple: “Just hold your phone to the reader” - what happens on the backend when you deploy this technology on the software side, can involve a few different parties.
Some of it happens in the cloud, and some if it happens of course at the property when a user is looking to enter the premises:
At the property there is an Apple certified reader such as the Kisi Reader Pro installed that can read authorized Kisi badges presented through Apple Wallet to trigger the electric lock to unlock.
More in detail: There are six different key elements to make Apple Wallet implementations happen, which we’ll explain in this overview:
1. In the cloud
2. On premises you have:
There are three options to deploy Apple Access with Kisi access control:
In this example we see the different components of a possible enterprise level deployment using Kisi as access management platform and access automation. The following components are used:
To unlock the office or building with iPhone or Apple Watch, administrators can provision access for their users in Kisi’s access management software. They can convert their plastic door access badge to a corporate badge we call “Kisi Pass” that can be added to Apple Wallet to get door access. The following outlines the user process after an access credential is issued to the user, for example, by adding their email in Kisi’s access management software.
How to design an Apple Wallet badge?
Apple’s badge design guidelines are accessible in their developer documentation.
In fact, Apple has a native badge designer divided to allow you to upload assets for different devices:
6. What happens to expired badges?
7. Is there an additional cost to deploy Apple Wallet for Access Control?
8. Will Apple Wallet pop up when it’s not set up?
Only Apple-certified vendors can be used to provision or unlock doors using Apple Wallet. Here is a list by credential managers and door readers of Apple-certified providers:
Certified brands available online as of May 15th 2023. If a brand is missing, please email “apple-wallet@getkisi.com” and let us know which to add.
* Coming soon
Apple Wallet
Access Passes
Access Credentials
The Wallet app lives right on your iPhone. It’s where you securely keep your credit and debit cards, driver’s license or state ID, transit cards, event tickets, keys, and more — all in one place. And it all works with iPhone or Apple Watch, so you can take less with you but always bring more.
The digital representation of a card in Apple Wallet is called a “pass.”
Apple mobile devices store and protect access credentials on a Secure Element within the device.
Credential Manager
Credential Provider
Participating Entity
Reader Manufacturer*
The Credential Manager role configures the pass elements and enables the provisioning and life cycle management of passes and credentials for one or multiple access installations.
The Credential Provider role delivers the credential to the Apple Access platform during the provisioning of the pass on the user device.
The Participating Entity is the party that owns or governs the access properties. The Credential Manager and Participating Entity can be the same organization.
Company that provides Apple certified NFC readers. Often same as “Credential Provider”.
In-app Provisioning
Access NFC Transactions
With in-app provisioning, users can securely create and add passes to their iPhone from the iOS app provided by the Participating Entity or the Credential Manager on behalf of the Participating Entity.
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Save time.
Enhance security.
Modernize your access control with remote management and useful integrations.
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