Provisioning profiles marked "Ineligible" for Contactless Pass Provisioning even though entitlement is present in profile

We are seeing what looks like a signing / managed-capability mismatch for Contactless Pass Provisioning.

Environment

  • Team ID: S7AUTD2C2B
  • Bundle IDs:
    • com.swiftpass.ios
    • com.swiftpass.ios.dev
  • Xcode: 26.4
  • macOS: 26.4

Problem

Our app has had Contactless Pass Provisioning approved by Apple for a long time, and builds were working until a few days ago. Without any intentional signing/capability changes on our side, Xcode started failing with the following error:

Provisioning profile "Swiftpass prod Appstore" doesn't include the Contactless Pass Provisioning capability. Contactless Pass Provisioning capability needs to be assigned to your team and bundle identifier by Apple in order to be included in a profile.

Observed behavior

  • Xcode marks the relevant provisioning profiles as "Ineligible" in the profile selector.
  • This affects both development/debug and release/App Store builds.
  • If we remove Contactless Pass Provisioning from the app entitlements/capabilities, the exact same profiles immediately become eligible and the signing error disappears.

Important detail

The downloaded provisioning profiles already contain the entitlement that Xcode claims is missing.

We verified the downloaded profile with:

security cms -D -i /Users/sergej/Downloads/Swiftpass_prod_Appstore\(1\).mobileprovision

and it contains:

<key>com.apple.developer.contactless-payment-pass-provisioning</key>
<array>
<string>shareablecredential</string>
</array>

So the issue appears to be that

  • the profile contents look correct
  • the capability is still present in the developer portal
  • but Xcode's eligibility check still says the profile does not include the capability

What we verified

  • Contactless Pass Provisioning is still enabled for the App ID in the Apple Developer portal
  • Newly recreated / redownloaded profiles still contain the entitlement
  • Both dev and distribution profiles are affected
  • The behavior is reproducible across profile refreshes and local cleanup

What we already tried

  • Reinstalled Xcode
  • Updated Xcode and macOS
  • Updated command line tools
  • Cleaned DerivedData
  • Deleted local provisioning profile cache
  • Refreshed/redownloaded profiles from Xcode
  • Recreated provisioning profiles in the developer portal
  • Removed and re-added the capability in Xcode

Expected behavior If the downloaded provisioning profile contains com.apple.developer.contactless-payment-pass-provisioning, Xcode should treat that profile as eligible.

Actual behavior Xcode reports that the capability is missing and marks the profile as ineligible, even though the entitlement is present in the downloaded profile.

Question Has anyone seen this specific mismatch with Contactless Pass Provisioning or other managed capabilities? This currently looks like either:

  • an Apple backend/App ID capability-assignment sync problem, or
  • an Xcode eligibility-validation bug for managed capabilities

Feedback Assistant ID: FB22439399. It contains screenshots that showcase the issue as well.

Earlier I wrote:

The permanent solution will involve a fix to Xcode

which was a bit simplistic. There are actually three factors involved here:

  • The capabilities assign to your team
  • The Xcode version
  • The Developer website

The second two have recently been updated, and it’s possible that that’s sufficient to resolve this issue. If you try the obvious path forward with the latest Xcode 26.5 beta, do you still have problems?

If you don’t, then you’re all set.

If you do, then my advice from earlier stands.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Provisioning profiles marked "Ineligible" for Contactless Pass Provisioning even though entitlement is present in profile
 
 
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