Event tickets on a phone: how they work

Tickets belong to a card program of the kind Event admission. Like any card program it is reviewed by native.cards, and it needs a published card design before people can join: see What to set up before your first member can join. Each event in it is one form.

The location is one of your outlets, so at least one has to exist first.

Nobody switches the door on. In the form's words: "Doors open and tickets start working by themselves at these times." Once tickets are out the time is fixed on the form. Reschedule then moves the event and every ticket together, and emails each guest the change.

Every ticket goes to a named person who has joined your program. Joining takes an email address and a 6-digit code. There is no app.

A ticket can carry a Ticket type, a Seat or section, a Gate and an Access zone. You can withdraw an invitation, which frees its place. An invitation nobody takes up lapses when the event ends.

If people pay for the event, they pay you, the way they already do. You then issue the ticket to that person. Nothing in native.cards links a sale to a ticket.

Owners and admins set up events and issue the tickets. Counter staff and location managers run the door at their own outlet.

The guest is emailed, and has a ticket page with the day, the times, the venue and address, their seat and their ticket number. Add to calendar and Directions sit under it. If you reschedule, a note headed "The time has changed" shows the old time struck through beside the new one.

Before doors there is nothing to scan. The page says when the code comes, for example "Your code opens today at 7:30 pm", and then: "That’s when doors open. Nothing to do until then." Once doors open it reads "You’re ready for the door", and Show my code puts a QR code on the screen.

The ticket can also sit in the guest's Wallet. Where you have Apple Wallet or Google Wallet turned on, the ticket page offers to add it as a Wallet Card, and staff can scan the code on that card too. A guest who never adds it still has the page and its code.

A member of staff opens Door under Counter on a phone, signed in with two-step verification, and picks the event. Under Start admitting they enter their own staff PIN: "After that every scan admits straight away, under your name, until you stop."

Each scan fills the screen with Admitted, the guest's name, seat and ticket number, then goes back to the camera. A refusal stays on the screen until staff press Scan the next ticket. A count at the top shows how many are in and how many are still to come.

After 15 minutes without a scan the PIN is forgotten and must be entered again, so a phone left on a table does not stay live. Everyone at the door needs their own PIN before the night: see How to prepare your staff to run the program.

A second tab, List, holds every guest by name, with a search by name or reference.

A screenshot. The ticket page gives no code until doors open, and each code it gives runs out after ten minutes. A picture of it is soon useless. The code on a Wallet Card is different. It stays the same, and a copy of it scans like the original. Copies are easy to make: Apple's own support page says of an iPhone 15 Pro or later, "You can also take a screenshot of a barcode or QR code", and that the phone then offers to add a pass to Wallet. Its one warning is for codes that change: "If you take a photo of a barcode or QR code that expires, such as a ticket for a concert, the pass won’t work." So a copy can reach your door. It gets one person in, and no more.

The same ticket twice. The Door says it plainly: "A ticket admits once." The first scan is admitted. The second shows Already used: "This card has already been admitted or used. It cannot be used again." That is true whether the second person holds the copy or the original. The name on the ticket is on the screen at every admission, so when two people claim one ticket, staff ask for a name and an ID.

A flat phone, or a guest with no signal. Staff find the guest on the List and press Admit by name. They are told to "Check their name against an ID or their booking", tick "I have checked this is the ticket holder", and choose why there was no scan: "Phone unavailable or flat", "Code would not scan" or "No signal to open the ticket". The ticket is then used, and "recorded as admitted by name, under your PIN".

Too early, or the wrong event. A scan before doors is refused. So is a ticket for another event. Where two of your events are open at once, the screen says Different event and names the one the ticket is for.

The staff phone drops its connection. The Door does not work offline: "The ticket was not checked. Scan it again when you are back online." Test the signal at the real entrance, not in the office.

We found no sound published figure for how long a scan takes at a door, so measure your own. Here is the sum, with made-up numbers.

Example: 120 tickets are out and doors open 30 minutes before the start. If 90 of those guests arrive in the last 15 minutes, that is 6 people a minute, or one every 10 seconds, through one phone.

Time a colleague scanning ten test tickets, greeting included. If ten take more than 100 seconds, one phone will not keep up with that rush, and you need a second member of staff scanning or earlier doors.

After your first event the guess becomes a record. The event's page has When people arrived: the busiest stretch, the first and last person in, how many were in before it started, and how many were found on the list by name. The door list sorts into Came and Didn’t come, and Export list downloads it.

• It is not sold here. native.cards takes no booking and no payment, so it gives no refund either.
• It cannot be transferred. To change who comes, an owner or admin cancels one ticket and issues another.
• It is not tapped. Apple's developer documentation says "Adding NFC to a Pass requires a special entitlement issued by Apple", and Google says of its tap protocol, "You must be certified in order to use this protocol." A native.cards ticket is a code a person scans.
• It opens no gate or turnstile.