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For keyholders and witnesses

Why does my card look out of date?

Updated September 2026

The pass updates itself, but that update travels as a push notification, and push is best effort. It can arrive late, or not at all, if the phone is offline, the network is slow, or Wallet has not synced in a while. Turn the card over and read the Refreshed row: it carries the date the card was generated, which is the one question only the card can answer. A calm looking card is not proof that everything is calm.

How an update is supposed to reach you

When something changes on the server, it sends a push to Wallet telling it that this pass has a new version. Wallet then pulls a fresh copy of the card, and the short line attached to the change banners your lock screen.

Nothing in that chain is guaranteed. A push can be dropped, delayed, or arrive at a phone that is offline; Wallet decides when to pull; and a card that never got the nudge simply keeps showing the last version it has. The design states this outright rather than promising freshness it cannot deliver.

That is why the events that matter are also emailed. An early exit request, protection going off, a phone that has stopped confirming and a lapsed subscription all reach your inbox for every keyholder, whatever the pass does.

The Wallet pass and every status word it can show At the top, the keyholder's Wallet pass: the Fold'em mark, one status word in the top corner, a night sky strip with a moon, and below it the first name and the day count. Under the pass, a legend of the sixteen status words the same card can carry: Setting up, Checking in, Not confirmed, Protection off, Subscription lapsed, Protection at risk, Term complete, Protection ended, Ended, Expired, Left, Handed over, Closed, Handover, Ending and Protected. The card cycles through them one at a time and never carries two; at rest it reads Protected. THE ONE THING THEY HOLD F Fold'em STATUS Setting up Checking in Not confirmed Protection off Subscription lapsed Term complete Protection ended Ended Expired Left Handed over Closed Handover Ending Protection at risk Protected KEYHOLDER OF Sam DAY 12 EVERY WORD IT CAN SAY one at a time Setting up Checking in Not confirmed Protection off Subscription lapsed Protection at risk Term complete Protection ended Ended Expired Left Handed over Closed Handover Ending Protected
The Wallet pass carries one status word at a time. These are the sixteen it can show; at rest it reads Protected.

The Refreshed row is the answer

Because a pass is a picture rather than a live feed, the back of the card carries a Refreshed row with the date it was generated. It is the only place either surface tells you how old what you are reading is, and it is the row to check before trusting a calm face.

That row deliberately fires no banner of its own. Its value changes on every single generation, so a notification for it would buzz on every pull and teach you to ignore the ones that matter. The same rule applies to the day count and the blocked attempt count.

Read together, the two facts make a real claim: a status word plus the day it was written. Protected on a card refreshed an hour ago and Protected on a card refreshed last week are different statements, and only the back distinguishes them.

Cards that are old on purpose

Some cards stop changing because there is nothing left to report, and those are not faults.

A card whose arrangement has ended keeps one word, either Ended, Expired, Left, Handed over or Closed, drops every other row, and keeps answering for seven days. After that week it stops answering altogether, which is a deliberate goodbye rather than a card that suddenly breaks.

Two other cards retire themselves on a date. The outgoing keyholder's card in a handover expires at the moment the takeover takes effect, so a stale card cannot sit in Wallet claiming a role that has moved. And a card whose term was released expires 30 days after the release was granted. Both of those are best effort too: arming the expiry still depends on a push landing, so it is an improvement on a frozen card rather than a guarantee.

If you need to know right now

  1. Turn the card over

    Read the Refreshed row first, and the Current status row above it. Between them they say what the card claims and when it claimed it, which is enough to decide whether to look further.

    The Wallet pass front, reading Role Keyholder, Status Protected, Days left 78 of 90, and a tip to turn the card over.

    The card whose back carries Refreshed

  2. Open the pass to force a pull

    Opening a pass in Wallet is what asks it to fetch a fresh copy. If the card was simply behind, this is usually where it catches up.

  3. Check your web link instead

    Your status page reads the same server the pass does, and it reads it at the moment you open it. If the two disagree, the page is the current one and the card is behind.

  4. If both are wrong, ask them to resend

    A resend from inside their app mints a new pass and a new link and retires the old ones. It costs you the Face ID setup on your current device, so it is the last step rather than the first.

What this does not do

Nothing you can do to a pass makes it a live feed. It shows what was true when it was generated, and there is no setting on it, on the page or in their app that changes that.

A stale card is also never a reason to doubt the emailed events. The four integrity letters are the guaranteed tier and are unaffected by whatever Wallet is doing, so a quiet card with no matching email means nothing happened rather than that something was missed.

Still stuck? Email support@foldem.app and we answer within two working days.