How to add any card such as loyalty card supermarket card or any other card to wallet

They are added from the merchant’s web site (rare) or from the merchant’s app (VERY common).

Generally you install the app and log-in “as you” to the app; then look for the “Add to Apple Wallet” icon.

Once the loyalty card is in your wallet; you generally don’t need to keep the app installed on your device.

Updated my iPhone 14 to iOS 16.1.1 and can't now add a loyalty card directly to my Apple Wallet! Clicking the '+' to add a card only offers debit/credit cards or Travel cards!

Why on earth has this facility been removed from Apple Wallet???

WORKAROUND.

In Appstore search for a "Digital wallet" app. (I randomly picked one called "Stocard"). Installed it. Added my loyalty cards into it (it scans the card's bar code in. This app seems not to have an option to read QR codes ☹️). For each card, select the card by tapping on its image. Then tap the ... button (top right of screen). In the resulting drop-menu choose "Add to Apple wallet". Done!

WHY, APPLE? FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, WHY HAS THIS GONE?

thebigjwa wrote:

Updated my iPhone 14 to iOS 16.1.1 and can't now add a loyalty card directly to my Apple Wallet! Clicking the '+' to add a card only offers debit/credit cards or Travel cards!

That is the way it has always worked. “+” is just for credit and debit cards; nothing has been removed. For loyalty cards you either click the Add to Wallet button on a digital version of the card or the issuer’s app, or scan a code on the card.

Here’s Apple’s guidance→Add, use, and share boarding passes, tickets, and other passes in Apple Wallet - Apple Support

The Wallet app is to allow you to have all issuer-authorized cards in one place. For that reason you can only add cards that the issuer has specified as allowed in the Wallet. Any issuer that wants their card to be in the wallet will add an “Add to Wallet” link on an image of their card, either in their app or on their website.

That “rare thing” is a website which first authenticates YOU in a secure manner, and ALSO can install a card to your wallet.

I’m not aware of ANY that do this; although they COULD … and I’m sure that there ARE some, somewhere.

A public library is a good example of an organization who probably COULD do it; but when did you last hear of a public library w/ “extra funds” to pay for “fancy web development” to replace library cards which have “worked fine” for well over a century?

Oh, and any such system would also require an ongoing software maintenance and user support “tail” … forever.

Most merchants - who are a profit-seeking venture - prefer to get you to install THEIR app on YOUR device. Their motives behind this can obviously vary widely.

Objects in the wallet are quasi-legal documents. That is, if the card is in the wallet it can be assumed that it is not a forgery. That’s why you can put airline tickets or vaccination certificates in it. If I go into a Walgreen’s, for example, I can scan my loyalty card at the terminal and it is accepted electronically. So the objects in the wallet are verified by the issuer before they can be added, and that’s what the Add to Wallet button does.

OK Lawrence, I have to stand corrected, don't I! My apologies!

In truth I last added a store loyalty card to my wallet a fair few years ago, and this time just assumed I had used the Wallet app, itself, to add the latest.

Why, then, is this functionality absent ? it seems to me to be such an obviously useful process.