Yesterday Apple rolled out its new iTunes Pass service to Japan, allowing users to use a Passbook card to add credit to an iTunes account from an Apple Retail Store. Starting today, the offer is also available in the United States and Australia. Users in Canada, Germany, and the UK are also reporting seeing the feature, though it’s not officially listed on Apple’s website for those countries just yet.
To take advantage of this new program, you need to use the iTunes Store app on an iOS device to obtain an iTunes Pass. You can get one of these by tapping the “Redeem” button at the bottom of the home page within the app. To use the card, you can visit an Apple Retail Store and ask a specialist to help you add credit to your account. The specialist can then scan the barcode on the Passbook card to immediately add credit to your account.
The process seems a bit cumbersome as opposed to using a credit card on the iTunes Store or purchasing a gift card to add credit to your account, but some users who are unable to use those methods may find this new option helpful.
Update: As some readers in the comments have noted, Apple’s instructions for accessing the iTunes Pass have not worked for some. Rather than tapping the redeem button on the iTunes Store app on iPhone, the iTunes Pass can be found under the account section below the redeem button. Example below:
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Reblogged this on Taste of Apple and commented:
Wow that was very quick! I’m glad Apple decided to release this in the United States. Although not everyone will make use of it, for certain people this will be very handy.
I still don’t get the point of this..? You get your gift card refilled at an apple store but not just use your credit card and make purchases directly
If a kid has a few dollars and wants to buy a new album or game, he can now go to the apple store and add more $ to his account instead of saving up to $15 or asking his parents to buy it
“You can get one of these by tapping the “Redeem” button at the bottom of the home page within the app. “—-Wrong.
Tap you Apple ID, then press “View Apple ID”. There is an button in your Account Settings page.
Not Wrong: If you haven’t already added an iTunes Pass, it’s there: iTunes Store > Redeem > at the bottom of the screen there is a picture of passbook with “iTunes Pass” at the heading. Click that and you can add the pass to passbook.
This is pretty cool! It’s not much different than buying an iTunes card and applying it yourself if you know how (not that it’s that difficult) but I can see parents using this as a way to give kids credit to an account instead of a free reign of the credit card. Also it gives them an incentive to go visit the Apple store to do so.
You can already give someone, in this case your kids, a monthly or whatever allowance to their iTunes account, right from yours. Although the possible amounts are kinda limited.
But the amount of people, in general, that know how to do that/would be bothered to learn how to do that are probably smaller than those who would rather just drop by the Apple store (if there’s one close) while they’re out and have someone in retail do it.
It’s most defintely not for everyone (or even a majority of people) but I know plenty of people who would rather do it this way than trust themselves to not mess the process up.
How do you do that?
What about india? http://wp.me/p3zd1e-1Ha
It is also availible in the Netherlands
Spain too
Now available in Canada too!
It worked for me here in the UK. Just annoying that you have to go visit an apple store to fully use it, should be able to use PayPal and add credit yourself!
Things like PayPal don’t work too well for voucher credit type things as they take a fee for every transaction. It’s higher than credit card fees too.
This will be handy for checking my remaining iTunes balance, I frequently buy iTunes Gift cards on sale, so I always have an account credit of some kind.
I don’t care about iTunes, I just want a way to add my apple gift cards to passbook the way I can add starbucks cards to it. It seems so silly that I need to have physical cards for Apple’s own store.