How to launch a discovery pass: 20 questions answered

The model suits someone who knows the town and its shop owners well. The work comes down to three jobs: pick the businesses, sell the pass, promote it. The businesses buy no hardware, and you get paid when the pass sells, before any offer is redeemed.

It isn’t passive income. You have to walk into each business, then find buyers, and the first weeks go mostly to explaining the idea.

The technical side (the pass in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, online payment, offer redemption, statistics) can be handed to a platform such as Arsom Pass. The Start your own page walks through that route for an entrepreneur or a local content creator.

There are three roles, plus the platform that runs the technology. The operator creates the pass, signs the businesses and sells it. Each participating business sets its offer and redeems it when a Pass Holder walks in. The Pass Holder buys the pass and keeps it on a phone.

Money moves in four directions at most:

• from the Pass Holder to the operator, at purchase;
• from the operator to participating businesses, if you agreed to a payout;
• from the operator to the businesses that resell the pass, if you agreed to a commission;
• from the operator to the platform and the payment processor.

The second and third are choices. An operator can pay the businesses nothing, in which case a business takes part for the exposure and the new customers. The article How a discovery pass works covers each role.

• businesses and, for each one, an offer in writing: one-time, repeatable or time-limited;
• a price and an expiry date;
• an illustration. On Arsom Pass, your artist’s work appears on the pass, and each program has its own visual identity;
• a way to take payment: your own Stripe account or, if you would rather not manage Stripe, Arsom’s account, which pays the funds out to you;
• a channel to promote the pass, whether that is a social account, a newsletter or the counters of the businesses themselves.

Before the first sale, have an advisor review your business structure, the taxes you must collect, your refund policy and how you use Pass Holder data. The rules change from one country, province or state to the next.

Spending comes in two stages. Before the first sale: the pass illustration, printed cards if you sell them, counter displays, some advertising. After it: payment fees taken on each purchase, and the share of the platform cost that scales with the number of passes sold.

Arsom Pass charges an annual subscription that covers the platform, maintenance and support, plus a small commission on each paid pass sold. Pricing is by quote. Ask every vendor which part is fixed and which part moves with sales: the fixed part is what you pay even if the pass sells poorly. The article Discovery pass costs and revenue goes through the cost lines.

Two numbers make up your sales: the price of the pass and the number sold. The price starts from the offers a buyer will actually use (see question 9). The number sold depends on the list of businesses, your audience and the counters that sell the pass. It moves the result more than anything else, and it is the hardest to forecast.

Depending on what you agreed, each sale then pays a share to participating businesses if you plan one (question 8), a commission to businesses that resell the pass at their counter, and the platform and payment fees. With Arsom Pass, the platform costs an annual subscription plus a small commission per paid pass sold, quoted per project.

What’s left isn’t profit yet: it pays for the illustration, printing, promotion and your time. Run your numbers at a conservative volume, then at a more ambitious one, and see which one covers your costs. We don’t publish a typical amount, because no Arsom Pass network has measured results yet. Discovery pass costs and revenue goes through each cost line and the break-even calculation.

The constraint is the schedule. You meet a shop owner during opening hours and outside the rush, which often falls in the middle of your own workday. Plan for late afternoons and Saturdays, and aim for a first network packed into a few streets: twenty meetings in one part of town take a handful of outings.

Once the pass is on sale, the load drops. With a platform such as Arsom Pass, the online sale, delivery of the pass to the Wallet, pass recovery by email and offer redemption do not go through you. What remains is questions from businesses and Pass Holders, payouts if you planned any, and promotion, which never really stops.

A first program with a fixed expiry date also gives you a deadline. At the end of the season or the year, you decide whether to continue with real numbers in hand.

Do the math from the buyer’s side. Assume a $50 pass and offers worth about $10 each. With twenty businesses, the pass holds $200 in offers and pays for itself on the fifth visit. With six, the buyer has to use five of the six offers just to break even.

Variety counts as much as volume. A coffee shop, a boutique and an activity give people reasons to go out at different times of the week.

For the first ones, start with owners who already know you and with one or two places the whole town knows. Their names on the list make the next meetings easier. Here is what you can tell them without overselling: no hardware to buy, an offer they set themselves, redemption on any phone, and a count of the visits the pass brings them.

Then fill in by category: one or two coffee shops, one or two restaurants, a boutique, an activity. A business says yes more easily when it is not one of five direct competitors. Talk to whoever makes the decision, and come during quiet hours.

The meeting takes ten minutes and a phone. Show the pass in your own Wallet, then how an offer is redeemed: the owner sees right away what the staff will have to do. Leave one page with the launch date, the businesses that have already agreed and what they commit to, then come back within the week.

The same objections come up. “I already give enough discounts”: suggest a free item rather than a percentage, which only costs the business what it costs to make. “My staff has no time”: redemption happens on a phone already in the shop. “People will abuse it”: every redemption is recorded, and a one-time offer works only once. “What if I want out?”: put the rule in a one-page written agreement reviewed by an advisor, since Pass Holders paid for a list of offers.

A discount given to a paying customer costs the business little, and it may accept with nothing in return. A free meal or free admission costs more, and a payout becomes a reason to sign.

A payout comes out of each sale, before what you keep. Without one, that share stays with you, and your pitch to businesses becomes the exposure you bring them. A middle path works too, for example a payout only for the businesses whose offer is expensive.

A reseller commission is a separate matter. It pays for one specific service: the business sold a pass at its counter. On Arsom Pass, every sale is credited to the business that brought it in and every redemption is recorded. That lets you base a payout on actual visits and export the data for commission payments.

Write the rule down before you sign the first business. Changing it mid-year is hard to explain to the ones who already agreed.

First test, from the buyer’s side: count the offers they’ll actually use before the pass expires, not the total value of the list. With offers worth about $10, a $50 pass pays for itself on the fifth visit. If a typical buyer won’t make five visits, the price is too high or the offers too thin.

Second test, from the operator’s side: the lower the price, the more passes you need to sell for the same gross sales. And what goes out with each sale (a fixed payout, a reseller commission, fees) takes a bigger bite out of a low price than a high one. Check that enough is left on each pass once those amounts are taken out.

Taxes are added according to where you operate. Arsom Pass calculates them at checkout, but which tax treatment applies to your pass is a question for an accountant.

1. Centralized online sales. The buyer pays on your page, through your Stripe account or through Arsom’s, which pays the funds out to you. Several passes can go into one purchase.
2. A reseller network. Participating businesses sell the pass themselves, with a counter display and a promotional QR code of their own. The sale is credited to the business whether or not you pay it a commission.
3. A physical card. A printed card carries the pass illustration and a single-use QR code: the code activates one pass only. It sells at the counter and works as a gift.

Open online sales first, because they depend on no one else. Then add counters, starting with businesses whose customers look like your buyers. Printed cards need a print run, which means money up front, so keep them for gift seasons or high-traffic spots. The Arsom Pass page describes all three.

An app of your own means development, publishing to two stores and ongoing updates. It also adds a step between the purchase and the first visit: the buyer has to download it, create an account, then find it again while standing at the counter.

Several platforms do without one. Bandwango and Proxi describe a pass that opens in the phone’s browser. Arsom Pass puts the pass in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet: the Pass Holder adds it after purchase and can recover it by email.

In France, Otipass and Adelya list a mobile app among their formats, next to a physical card.

The Wallet has limits. A Wallet pass is a card with your illustration, the program name and its expiry date: it does not replace a guide, and photos of the places or a map of the area belong on your site or your social accounts. For a scavenger-hunt format where people collect check-ins from place to place, a challenge platform is a better fit. And the pass needs a phone with Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.

On Arsom Pass, this works on any phone or computer: the business buys no scanner and no tablet. Each one gets its own redemption login, so you know which business every offer was used at.

The repeat rule is set offer by offer. A business chooses between a one-time offer, a repeatable offer and a time-limited offer.

Plan for two kinds of abuse. One is a pass that gets lent or resold: if you spot it, individual Pass Holder management lets you deactivate that Pass Holder. The other is a photocopied printed card: each card carries a single-use QR code that activates one pass only.

Other platforms handle this differently. Bandwango, for example, lists four methods: GPS check-in, a PIN entered on site, a redeem button, and a QR code displayed by the business that the Pass Holder scans.

You start with two advantages: followers who trust your picks, and owners who have already seen what one of your posts sends through their door. The second makes signing easier. A business may agree to take part with no payout if the pass comes with exposure in your content.

Count only the followers who live near the businesses. A national audience doesn’t buy a pass that is valid in one town.

To sell, a link to the purchase page in your profile is enough at first. Businesses can sell the pass at their counters at the same time.

Tell your followers plainly that the pass is your product. Rules on commercial content differ by country, so check them with an advisor. The Start your own page and the article Monetize a local audience with a discovery pass go further.

With a fixed expiry date, every pass in a program ends on the same day. That is easy to explain, and the date becomes the moment to renew. The drawback is that a late buyer gets less time. Decide ahead whether you stop selling before the end, lower the price, or open sales for the next program.

On Arsom Pass, you choose the expiry date of each program. Several programs can run side by side, a summer pass and an annual pass for example, each with its own visual identity.

Depending on the jurisdiction, the law restricts or prohibits expiry dates on prepaid cards, with exceptions. How a discovery pass is classified depends on what it gives: discounts, goods, or an amount to spend. This guide states no rule. Have a legal advisor in your jurisdiction review your expiry date and your refund policy.

The platforms do not all serve the same customer. According to their websites:

• Bandwango (United States) serves destination marketing organizations, chambers of commerce and downtown districts. Its pass is a mobile website, with no app.
• Otipass and Adelya (France) serve tourism offices, with physical or digital passes.
• Open Pass (United Kingdom) offers multi-attraction passes as a managed service.
• Proxi (United States) is self-serve, with no contract. Its passport runs in the phone’s browser.
• PassKit issues Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes for any purpose. Its home page does not describe a multi-business discovery pass.
• Arsom Pass puts the pass in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, sells it online, through businesses and as a printed card, and credits every sale to the business that brought it in.

Ask each of them the same questions, and ask to see the pass on a phone before you sign. The platform comparison goes through these criteria with sources.

Bandwango serves destination marketing organizations, chambers of commerce and downtown districts, and reports more than 350 organizations with live passports. Its pass is a mobile website that the Pass Holder can save to the home screen. It publishes no prices and charges an annual license fee. For a paid pass, it quotes 60 to 90 days to build once the merchant list is received, and under an hour for a first self-serve pass.

Depending on what you are looking for:

• Self-serve, with no contract. Proxi, aimed at destination marketing organizations and chambers of commerce, is self-serve, with a free or paid passport and payments through Stripe.
• A French vendor. Otipass and Adelya work with tourism offices. Adelya says a pass can be set up in 4 weeks.
• A check-in trail. Tourismo describes QR check-in trails with points and tiers.
• A pass in the Wallet and cards to sell at the counter. Arsom Pass puts the pass in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, delivers print-ready cards with single-use QR codes and credits every sale to a business.

The comparison has the detail on each vendor, with sources.

What the vendors’ websites say:

• Otipass serves tourism offices and local governments in France, as software as a service. Its website comes in five languages, French included. It publishes no prices.
• Adelya reports more than 50 tourism offices, regions and networks, pass sales at the office, online or through a reseller, and setup in 4 weeks.
• Bandwango, in a client story from Ottawa, mentions a free machine translation tool and a paid translation service.
• Proxi lists translation at $50 per month, per language and per map on its Pro plan, and includes machine translation in its Premium plan.

Ask every vendor, Arsom included, to show you those three screens in French before you sign, and ask what language their support team works in.

Location changes the rules as much as the language does: taxes to collect, expiry, refunds. In Quebec, both the language of commercial documents and prepaid cards are regulated. In France, check where the pass falls under payment regulations. Review those points with a local advisor, whichever platform you choose.

A discovery pass is made of several parts: issuing Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes, online payment and taxes, unique codes for printed cards, a redemption screen for businesses, and tracking of sales and redemptions. Then all of it has to be maintained whenever Apple or Google change their rules.

A middle route starts from a general-purpose Wallet pass tool. PassKit, for example, publishes pricing from US$39.50 per month. Going by its public offer, selling the pass, running the network of businesses and handling payouts are left for the customer to build.

A specialized platform delivers those parts already assembled, with your illustration. On Arsom Pass, adding a program or a business is a settings change, each operator has a dedicated account manager, and we build what operators ask for, so their requests shape the product.

Before you sign with any vendor, confirm that you can export your Pass Holder data at any time. That is what lets you change platforms later.

The difference shows at the counter, when the pass has to come out.

A Wallet pass is saved on the phone. The Pass Holder opens it like a ticket, with no password to remember. With Arsom Pass, it can also be recovered by email, after switching phones for instance.

A web app is a page. Bandwango, which made that choice, states that its passes work in any browser and can be saved to the home screen. A Pass Holder who skipped that step has to dig up the purchase email. On the other hand, a web page has more room for content, such as a map of the businesses.

On the product pages read in November 2026, most discovery pass platforms describe a web app or a dedicated app. Arsom Pass puts the pass in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. Question 11 covers what the Wallet does and does not do.

What the websites show:

• Bandwango: no prices, an annual license fee.
• Otipass: software as a service, no price shown. Adelya and Tourismo show no prices, and Open Pass gives its pricing on request.
• Proxi: Free, Pro and Premium plans, with amounts that come out of a calculator.
• PassKit: from US$39.50 per month, for a general-purpose Wallet pass tool.
• Arsom Pass: an annual subscription that covers the platform, maintenance and support, plus a small commission on each paid pass sold. Pricing is by quote.

Public pages don’t let you rank these platforms by price. What we can say: Arsom Pass costs less than Bandwango. To compare two quotes, run them through the same sales scenario over a year, payment fees included, then run it again at a low volume: that is where a high fixed fee shows.