Apple Wallet’s F1 movie ads better not give Google any ideas

Apple’s original film, F1 The Movie, is coming to theaters this week. If you have somehow missed all of the advertising for it, don’t worry. The tech giant is making sure you know all about it by pushing ads through Apple Wallet.

Users of Apple Wallet are reporting seeing an unusual push notification from the app. This alert informs iPhone owners that they can use a promotional code to get a $10 discount at Fandango if they buy two or more tickets for F1 The Movie. While that may be a tempting offer on its face, users aren’t particularly happy about how they’re learning about this deal.

As you can probably imagine, the idea of your digital wallet forcing ads on you is rubbing some the wrong way. Some outraged users are even comparing the situation to Apple’s infamous U2 debacle, which saw the band’s album automatically added to users’ iTunes library.

As TechCrunch points out, Apple added an option to disable “Offers & Promotions” from the Wallet app in iOS 26’s beta build. However, this option doesn’t currently exist in the stable version of the app. This means the only recourse non-beta users have is to disable notifications or turn off seeing card benefits within Wallet during checkout. Just as troubling is that the inclusion of this toggle suggests more marketing messages and promotions could be on the way.

Google Wallet may notify you that your “pass has been updated” when one of your loyalty passes receives a new offer. But that’s about as far as it goes. Thankfully, Android users don’t have to worry about Google Wallet sending them ads like this.