Your card shows up when they’re near your door.

Wallet geofencing means putting geographic coordinates inside a wallet pass so the customer’s phone surfaces that pass when they are near one of those places. In Apple Wallet the card appears on the lock screen with a short line of text you wrote; in Google Wallet the phone raises a notification. No app is involved and nothing is sent from your server at that moment — the phone decides on its own.

Ten on each platform. Apple’s pass format allows an array of up to 10 locations per pass, and Google Wallet allows a maximum of 10 merchant locations per class, rejecting any beyond that. Businesses with more than ten branches usually issue branch-specific passes so each customer’s card carries the ten locations nearest to them, or add Bluetooth beacons at key sites.

No. Geofenced advertising buys impressions served to strangers whose devices entered an area, using third-party location data, and it stops the moment you stop paying. Wallet geofencing reaches only customers who already added your card, costs nothing per impression, and keeps working for as long as they keep the pass.

No. The coordinates travel inside the pass to the customer’s device, and the phone evaluates them locally. No location is sent to Wally or to the business, which is also why there are no impression analytics for this feature — the privacy and the missing reporting are the same fact.

Partly. Apple’s maxDistance key lets you set a maximum distance in metres, and the system uses the smaller of your value and its own default — so you can tighten the radius but never widen it. Google sets its own radius around each merchant location and does not expose it.

No, they do different jobs. Geofencing decides where and when the card appears; it cannot say anything new. A pass update push is how you send a fresh message — an offer, a reminder, a change of hours — to everyone holding the card. Most businesses use both: the push carries the news, the geofence catches the customer at the door.