After building a significant business around making push messages easier to use, Urban Airship is now aiming to do the same with Apple’s Passbook with the acquisition of Tello.

The small startup has developed PassTools, a visual editor for Apple’s Passbook that lets anyone create passes without dealing with complicated code. Think of it like those simple webpage creators that made it possible to create a site without the headache of HTML. For Urban Airship, it’s an early play on a potentially explosive new market of mobile publishers.

“Passbook allows companies to have a mobile presence without building an app and having consumers download it. … Now they can just build a pass,” said Urban Airship chief marketing officer Brent Heiggelke in an interview with VentureBeat. “We think this is very complementary [with push messaging].”

Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed. Urban Airship will keep Tello’s Palo Alto offices, which will give it a Silicon Valley base in addition to its San Francisco office and Portland, Ore. headquarters. All of Tello’s employees will move over to Urban Airship’s new Digital Wallet group, which Tello chief executive Joe Beninato will head up.

As Beninato tells it, Apple made it very difficult for publishers to create Passbook passes. The biggest issue? There was no way to see what your pass looked like while you were building it — instead you had to load it on an iPhone after you finished coding the pass. With PassTools, the company developed a visual editor to show what your pass would look like in real time, and it has also layered its own API on top of Apple’s Passbook API, allowing you to fully build a pass without using any JSON code.

Tello originally launched two years ago with a mobile feedback product, but it saw a bigger business opportunity when Apple announced Passbook in June and rushed to release PassTools alongside the release of iOS 6 on September 19.

“The plan wasn’t let’s build this thing and sell it off a couple months later,” Beninato said.

But he quickly realized how well Tello would fit alongside Urban Airship. Beninato said he’s known Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton for several years and that the companies shared some investors, which made an acquisition fairly painless.

As for Urban Airship’s new Digital Wallet group, Beninato said it will be preparing for the launch of wallet services on other platforms (Android already has Google Wallet, though that’s still in its early stages). For now, the team will be working on integrating its tech with Urban Airship.

“We’re really excited about the idea of being able to work with companies outside of the need for having an app,” Heiggelke added.  “We think there are a lot of companies where a pass may end up being a better solution for them than an app. Being able to work with those companies and develop a really effective mobile program … is really significant for our business.”

Urban Airship, which has powered more than 30 billion push messages through its platform, added location capabilities to its push platform September. With Tello, the company is continuing to make the simple push message one of the most interesting features in smartphones.

Tello has raised $2.7 million from True Ventures, Bullpen Capital, 500 Startups, Felicis Ventures, and others. The company currently has five full-time employees and five part-time employees. Urban Airship has raised around $22 million so far from True Ventures, Foundry Group, Verizon, Salesforce, and others.

PayPal finally demonstrated its digital wallet at a South by Southwest panel earlier today. The wallet will bring a slew of new features and payment options to the service.

But if you couldn’t make it to the Austin barbecue and beerfest show, the company has also put a (much less exciting) version of its demo online.

In the video, PayPal vice president of global product and experience Sam Shrauger shows off what you can do with the company’s new wallet, some of which is surprisingly cool for a payments service. For example, you’ll be able to purchase something in a store and choose how you want to pay for it later. You can also set up rules to send specific purchases, say anything over $500, to a specific payment option.

The company gave us a preview of the digital wallet’s features last week, but this is the first time we’ve actually seen it in action. Surprisingly, Shrauger only shows us the desktop interface for the digital wallet, which looks like it will replace the standard PayPal.com user interface (good riddance).

I’m keen on seeing how the digital wallet will change PayPal’s mobile app though. From what I’ve heard, the company’s mobile digital wallet will just be an update to its existing app (that’s certainly an easy way to get existing users onboard).

Through the digital wallet, PayPal and its parent company eBay will continue their multi-pronged approach to nabbing themselves a share of the future payments market. The company is currently dabbling in NFC money transfers and carrier payments, and has recently expanded its pilot payments program with the Home Depot to include all of the store’s locations.

In the coming months, Verizon Wireless customers will be able to use Serve to make payments for digital goods and other transactions on their Verizon smartphones and payments. Serve is a recognition that in the new digital economy, the traditional credit card isn’t enough to capture all of the transactions that happen. The deal should help grease the wheels of mobile commerce.

With Serve, American Express users will be able to “spend, send and swipe — online, offline, and mobile.” It can be used to share a bill for lunch with a friend or buy virtual goods in online games. In that sense, a broader mobile payments ecosystem could help everyone, from carriers to mobile game publishers.

Verizon customers will be able to create Serve accounts that function as digital wallets that they can access via smartphones and tablets. With Serve, a smartphone user could receive an offer on his or her mobile device and accept it on the spot, paying via the Serve online checkout system. In that system, the user authenticates a mobile number and then proceeds to make the purchase. The transaction appears on the Serve account bill.

Mobile transactions can take place in a few clicks. Merchants who accept Serve payments can get quicker payment processing and settlements. So far, millions of merchants who accept American Express also accept Serve.

American Express announced the Serve platform in March. It is a way for the company to compete with digital payment companies such as PayPal, Boku, eBay-Zong and Visa (the latter bought PlaySpan for $190 million in February). Last month, American Express announced a similar deal with Sprint.

Payfone, a mobile payments company partially owned by American Express, will handle pre-authorization and smart routing for Serve checkout on Verizon wireless. Dan Schulman, group president of enterprise growth at American Express, said that the collaboration with Verizon shows that Serve is reaching a large audience at a fast speed.

“Together we’re taking the necessary steps to make mobile commerce a reality,” he said.

Verizon enterprise and government chief Greg Haller said that Verizon is building a mobile payments ecosystem through its own Isis joint venture and with Serve.

Verizon Wireless has more than 89 million wireless subscribers. Here are some other details about Serve we’ve written about before:

With Serve, American Express wants to go after a new demographic of consumers, including those who are young and tech savvy, but perhaps not fans of credit cards or other traditional payments. It will also help American Express penetrate emerging markets overseas where cash rules. Until now, American Express wasn’t reaching a lot of consumers who don’t use traditional credit cards.

Serve unifies online, offline and mobile payment options into a single account that can be funded from a bank account, debit, credit or charge card, or by receiving money from another Serve account. Serve’s aim is to get rid of cash, check, or debit cards by being more convenient. Serve accounts can be accessed from apps on Apple iOS and Android devices. Users can also access accounts on Serve.com and on Facebook.

The account comes with a reloadable Serve prepaid card that you can use at any merchant or automated teller machine that accepts American Express cards.

In contrast to debit cards, Serve lets you create sub-accounts for spouses or children. That allows parents to set allowances for children or others in the family. Parents can specify what the money can be spent on, such as allowing cash withdrawals or limiting spending to merchant transactions only. Parents can also receive reports back on how their children spent the money. The same accounts could be used for small businesses, such as authorizing sub accounts for delivery drivers who incur expenses on the go.

American Express got the foundation for Serve from its acquisition of Revolution Money in early 2010. Other partners for Serve include Ticketmaster, expense reporting firm Concur and Flipswap. Serve is also working with five charities: Autism Speaks, Best Friends Animal Society, Malaria No More, Save The Children and Stand Up For Kids.