Hello potato-swiss
Am I correct in saying the Swisspass (red card with photo) only stores travel cards like the GA travel card and the Half Fare card, not for single/return tickets purchased through SBB.ch or SBB app?
Yes, this is correct.
The SwissPass has two chips, one is for the public transport subscriptions, the other is for third party offers such as Gornergrat or other mountain transportation tickets (or ski tickets). Third party offers and public transport subscriptions available on your SwissPass can be checked at www.swisspass.ch, or by scanning the SwissPass card at any ticketing machine; there is a scanner underneath the touch screen where you can scan the code available on the back of your card.
From a technical perspective, a ticket is never stored on your SwissPass card, no matter the ticket type. This is technically not possible as your SwissPass card does not have a SIM card included to receive the tickets via mobile network. The card is like a key to unlock the tickets saved on the ticket inspectors device (or the turnstile column), for example. To check e-tickets by simply scanning the card would mean that every single e-ticket has to be dispatched to every ticket inspector’s device in real-time which is a technical challenge (number of tickets per sync cycle / mobile network availability, etc.). There are currently test runs to make it possible in the future, for the time being only subscriptions (or third party offers) can be checked by presenting the SwissPass.
Best regards,
Roland