Apply for Apple VAS

Apple's Value Added Services (VAS) is the NFC protocol that lets Apple Wallet passes tap on a merchant terminal. Setup is mostly paperwork — a few weeks end-to-end. Here's the full checklist.

1. 1

   Enrol in the Apple Developer Program

   Organisation account (US$99/year). Requires a D-U-N-S number for your company. developer.apple.com/programs

2. 2

   Confirm your Pass Type ID + signing cert

   You likely already have these from issuing passes through PilotPR. If not, create one in Apple Developer → Identifiers → Pass Type IDs.

3. 3

   Apply for Apple VAS access

   Email wallet-vas@apple.com (or your Apple Developer rep) with: company name, website, Apple Team ID, use case (loyalty/membership/store card), terminal partner and POS vendor, expected merchant volume.

4. 4

   Sign Apple's VAS agreement

   NDA + terms, returned after Apple's review. Typical turnaround is several weeks.

5. 5

   Generate the VAS Merchant ID

   Apple Developer → Identifiers → Merchant IDs → "+". Note: this is separate from your Apple Pay Merchant IDs.

6. 6

   Create the VAS certificate

   From the Merchant ID, generate the VAS certificate and download the .p12. Keep the private key with your terminal vendor — PilotPR only ever stores the public key.

7. 7

   Provision the terminal

   Send the cert to your terminal vendor (Verifone Cloud, Ingenico Estate, Castles, Square Reader SDK, etc.). They load the cert into your readers.

8. 8

   Paste the public key into PilotPR

   Settings → Wallet NFC → Apple VAS. Paste the base64 public key from your cert, set the expiry date, toggle Enable. From the next issue, every .pkpass includes the nfc block.

9. 9

   Test tap-to-redeem

   Issue a test pass, add it to a real iPhone Wallet, and tap it on your provisioned terminal. Confirm your POS receives the redemption payload (the pass serial) before going live.