Passcreator: How a wallet card experiment became a global business

It's Oscar night in Los Angeles. While the cameras capture the arrival of the stars, David Sporer sits in a windowless side room of the Dolby Theatre and looks at screens full of monitoring dashboards. Every scan of a ticket, every guest who enters the theater - everything runs through his software. "It's a few hours where you really have to be fully involved," smiles the Passcreator founder. "But this tension and energy on this night is always something special."

What began in 2012 as an experiment with a beta version of the Flow framework has developed into one of the leading platforms for digital wallet cards. From ADAC membership cards to Oscar tickets - Passcreator now manages millions of digital passes in Apple and Google Wallet. A success story in which Flownative Beach plays an important role.

When Flow was still in its infancy

The story of Passcreator began at a time when Neos and the Flow framework were still being treated as the "successor to TYPO3" and David Sporer's job at the time was "not really that big a challenge". "I had been working with TYPO3 and found the whole dependency injection concept in Flow really interesting," he recalls. "I understood exactly zero of it at the time, but it sounded really exciting."

Then, in 2012, Apple introduced "Passbook" - which later became "Wallet". "I just kind of tinkered around," says David. "Then I started building a very simple application with Flow where you could enter your first name and surname and then a dummy Wallet voucher popped out."

What began as a gimmick became serious after the launch of iOS 6 in the fall of 2012: "After the launch, I had a mid to high six-figure number of visitors to this site and then thought to myself, okay, maybe this is more than just a bit of tinkering."

Wallet cards for millions of members

Today, Passcreator manages projects that David Sporer would hardly have thought possible back then. The freemium model - "you can simply register and have the full range of functions, only limited in the number of cards" - is constantly attracting new customers. Including some that you wouldn't necessarily expect.

"At the beginning, I thought it was really only for small customers, because big ones have resources and developers anyway, they'll build it themselves," David recalls. The reality is different: The ADAC with its 22 million members - "more than the Catholic Church in Germany for a few years" - relies on Passcreator for its digital membership cards.

The ADAC project demonstrates the complexity of modern wallet systems, as there are many variants and customer requirements that need to be taken into account. Passcreator not only takes care of the design, but also updates, push notifications and the management of different membership statuses.

Don't call us, we'll call you

The Oscar project, which Passcreator is already managing for the fourth time, is even more spectacular. "During the COVID pandemic, the Oscars decided that they no longer wanted paper tickets," explains David. "That was the initial spark, they didn't want the guests to hand over a ticket to the security people and have it pressed back into their hands."

The solution: digital tickets in the wallet that can be scanned contactlessly. What sounds simple becomes a logistical challenge at an event of this size. "We are there with two people and help with everything that has to do with the preparation of ticket scanning," says David, describing the process. "We monitor the systems on site so that nothing goes wrong in the background when sending and checking the tickets."

On the other side of the Atlantic, Flownative actively monitors the infrastructure during the hot phase. Robert Lemke is in constant contact with the Passcreator team: "The entire setup is geo-redundant - in the unlikely event that the entire data center in Nuremberg fails, we can switch to another one within seconds," explains Robert. "Something like this has never happened to me in my professional career, but the Academy's standards for the Oscars are very high."

24/7 around the globe: when downtime is not an option

With customers in more than 40 countries across the globe, Passcreator faces particular challenges. "We hardly ever have times when it would be convenient to shut down the platform for a few minutes," says Sporer, explaining the reality of a global SaaS provider. "We make sure that the platform is available 100% of the time."

These requirements led to a rethink of hosting. Initially, Sporer tried everything himself: "I set up Kubernetes clusters myself. I even gave a presentation about it at the Neos conference." But reality caught up with him: "However, doing this really well is more than a full-time job."

The solution came with Flownative Beach: "Flownative basically provides us with a very specific solution that is just right for Flow and they simply know how to offer it so that it works."

Security as the basis for business

At a time when data protection and security are becoming increasingly important, Passcreator is particularly challenged. "We are now ISO-certified ourselves, so we also have a duty to select our suppliers carefully," explains David.

The requirements are specific: "We now have pen tests from customers several times a year, which test the software and the entire platform from the outside for security risks." Additional security measures are required for customers from the financial sector in particular.

Flownative Beach separates applications and data from different customers in a cluster using technical measures. Dedicated clusters are also available for special requirements. "We have customers who prefer to have their own cluster," says David Sporer. "The reason for this is usually not performance or security per se, but a fundamental decision: If we work with a service provider, then it has to be a dedicated system that only holds data from our end customers."

GDPR and the power of geopolitical developments

The importance of European hosting solutions has been reinforced for Passcreator by various court rulings. "There were two court rulings from the ECJ, which first overturned Safe Harbor and then Privacy Shield," explains David. "Ultimately, we are now back in the same situation thanks to Trump. All he has to do is sign an executive order and the whole thing will fall apart again."

The consequence: "We are currently in the process of switching everything to EU hosting and want to get rid of all US subcontractors as far as possible." A process that Passcreator is driving forward together with Flownative. "Two years ago, together with Flownative, we considered how we could migrate from the Google Cloud to a German provider. This solution now exists, as Robert's team has set up a completely new Beach infrastructure at Hetzner Online."

Partnership at eye level

What David particularly appreciates about working with Flownative is the direct communication: "We don't have to struggle through three call centers until we somehow get an answer, especially when it has to be quick."

The partnership goes beyond pure hosting: "We have a real partner at our side and I know that when things are important, we can rely 100% on you to take care of them. That gives me the peace of mind that I can sleep well."

The Flow expertise is particularly helpful: "For smaller satellite projects for customers, we usually also do a small Flow project and know that I can log in to Flownative Beach and make three clicks and then it works."

When simply working is the best feature

When asked about his favorite feature in Beach, David answers pragmatically: "The fact that I rarely have to log in because it usually just works."

Nevertheless, there are wishes for the future: "More helpful statistics on performance issues" are at the top of the list. "If something in the application becomes slow in certain situations, I would like to have in-depth insight into the relevant metrics. Is it the server, is it the database, is it the customer's internet? That would be the killer feature that would make us even happier."

13 years later: Flow as the foundation

Despite all the technological developments, Flow remains the foundation of Passcreator. "It's a product that has been around for 12 or 13 years now and has grown historically," reflects David Sporer. "We have simply built up expert knowledge in Flow and that works well for us."

The decision made back then is proving to be the right one: "There are many PHP developers, there are also many people who are at least familiar with Symfony, who then quickly find their way into Flow. We are fast, we are agile when it comes to software development."

From the first beta version to the Oscars - Passcreator shows how a technical experiment can become an international business. With Flownative at his side, David Sporer can concentrate on what he does best: Developing wallet cards for the whole world. And when the next Oscar night comes around, he knows that the infrastructure is up and running - even if he is standing at the buffet at the dinner party.