WeWork May Soon Support Apple ‘Office Keys’ for Its Many Flexible Workspaces

Credit: Apple

Last year, iOS 15 introduced the ability to add Digital Keys to your iPhone’s Wallet app to use your iPhone to get into your home, office, car, or even hotel room. Of course, the problem with technology like this is that Apple can only build the foundation — other companies have to get on board to embrace the technology, and that’s sometimes a long and slow road.

Car Key first arrived nearly two years ago in iOS 13.6, but it’s only just begun expanding beyond a single carmaker. Home Keys and Hotel Keys seem to be experiencing a similarly slow pace of adoption, with only a single, smart home lock on the market so far and one hotel chain rolling out digital room keys at six of its locations.

So, it’s not unexpected to find that support for getting office keys onto your iPhone has moved at an even slower pace. Since companies don’t usually advertise their security plans, some businesses may already be working on it more quietly. Still, we’ve only heard of one public announcement: Silverstein Properties said last month it’s bringing Apple Office Keys to the 7 World Trade Centre building. That will eventually be expanded to cover its 50,000 office customers in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

Now, there may be another slightly more public player getting on board: flexible workplace provider WeWork.

While there’s been no public announcement, the folks over at MacRumors were poking around in the WeWork iPhone app and found image assets and hidden code that points to Office Key support.

The WeWork mobile app already provides a built-in Access Card that uses Bluetooth Low Energy and NFC to open office spaces at some locations, so it seems reasonable that the company would be working on embracing Apple’s Office Key. It’s an ideal use of the technology for a company like WeWork, which has a pretty transient customer base.

The code found by MacRumors contains a specific string that reads “add to wallet button tapped,” which is clearly a reference to adding a key to Apple Wallet. There’s also an image hidden in the app that appears to represent adding a card to Apple Wallet. The App Store page for WeWork also lists the app as supporting Apple Wallet, although it’s not clear if that’s part of this or for another unrelated feature of the WeWork app.

Benefits of Apple Office Key

Moving to Apple’s Office Key will provide several benefits for WeWork users over the current in-app “mobile keycard” design:

1. WeWork users will immediately gain Apple Watch support. The WeWork app isn’t available on the Apple Watch, which means customers have to pull out their iPhone to unlock an office space.
2. The Apple Wallet app won’t get in the way of using your card. Since many WeWork door readers use NFC, this can trigger Apple Pay, requiring folks to dismiss the extra prompt. Some have even worried that WeWork is trying to charge something to their credit card.
3. WeWork customers won’t need to keep background location services on since Apple Wallet will handle everything. While WeWork customers can still use WeWork mobile keycards with background location disabled, they’ll be required to open the app each time they want to unlock an office door.

Many of these benefits are common to using office keys in general — or even hotel keys — although you’ll gain even more features if you’re working in an office that never had a mobile app to begin with.

It’s unclear when WeWork will roll out Office Keys for its properties or how widespread that rollout will be. Right now, WeWork’s mobile keycards are only available in a few select buildings, so these will likely also be the first to get Office Key support.