Summary
- Google Wallet may soon have its own Quick Setting tile for smoother contactless payments.
- While a Wallet tile already exists, this is a system-level feature that OEMs can disable — for instance, Samsung disables the tile on its One UI skin.
- This new Google Wallet tile would be provided by the app itself, meaning that anyone with Google Wallet installed would be able to add the tile for quick access to the payment service.
The Quick Settings menu is the heart of Android’s operations. It is an easily accessible UI that is customizable, and allows you to quickly access some of the most used tools on your Android device. These include the stock offerings, like toggles for mobile data and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, brightness, and volume, alongside customizable ones, with tools like a flashlight, location toggle, power saver, screen recorder, and a lot more.
There’s even an option to check which apps are currently running on your phone directly from the panel, making it a central hub that helps users get things done quickly.
Related
How to see which apps are running from Quick Settings
Find out all the active apps on your phone right from the Quick Settings panel
OEMs have full control over the features available as part of their Quick Settings panel, and they sometimes limit shortcuts that might be important to users. Such is the case with Google Wallet.
You might currently see Google Wallet in your Quick Settings panel when you swipe down on your device, but not all Android phones have the shortcut as part of the menu. The shortcut is made available through a system-level feature called Quick Access Wallet, but OEMs have the final say whether the functionality is available to users or not. That is the case with Samsung, which doesn’t show Google Wallet in its Quick Settings panel. This, however, might soon change.
A native Wallet tile might be on the horizon
Source: Android Authority
As shared by Android Authority, Google Wallet’s latest 24.26.650309275 version offers hints of the app gaining its own Quick Setting tile, completely separate from the system-level Quick Access Wallet. Tapping this tile would open the Google Wallet app, while long pressing it would reportedly pull up the app’s info.
It’s worth noting that if you have Google Wallet set as the default payment app, the app will automatically pop up when you attempt to make a contactless payment at a NFC payment terminal. However, if you have multiple cards stored in your digital wallet, and you wish to pay with one that is not set as default, you need to open the Google Wallet app and manually select the card.
In cases where the OEM doesn’t offer a Quick Setting shortcut, this can be cumbersome, and slightly more time-consuming, especially when you’re in a packed checkout line. A Quick Setting tile that would let you jump to Google Wallet with one tap, regardless of the phone’s manufacturer, would streamline the payment experience for users.
It’s worth noting, however, that the tile was discovered in an APK teardown by enabling specific flags within the app, which means it is still under development. It is unclear if and when the functionality might roll out widely.