Key Takeaways
- Wear OS upgrades improve pass management, making it easier to access and organize different types of passes.
- Google Wallet expands globally, with the addition of 10 more countries for the Android app and 28 more for the web version.
- Integration with Gmail is enhanced to automatically add train tickets received in confirmation emails to Google Wallet, joining movie tickets.
Google Wallet just got a huge boost with a series of updates that make it accessible across platforms. A digital refresh makes Wallet the perfect place for cards, passes, keys, and IDs on Wear OS, the web, and Android. Pant pockets will soon be obsolete.
Wear OS significantly improves how passes are handled, thanks to new pass groups (via 9to5Google). There’s no need to scroll through a long list of different passes. Movie tickets, train tickets, and boarding passes will all be grouped together. You can browse through each pass group as a carousel and unclutter your wallet with pass archiving. There’s even an “unscanned passes” section, although Google doesn’t give much information on that.
A new wallet website for more people
The Wallet website also gets an expansion and is now available in 43 countries. The site launched earlier this year to only 15 countries, so this is a significant boost. The site lets you organize your payment cards, passes, and loyalty cards from a Chrome browser, and makes it easy to check out online. Google assures everyone who hasn’t yet received the web version that “this is just Phase 1” of a plan to make wallet.google.com available globally.
It’s the same deal with the Google Wallet app for Android, which arrives in 10 more countries, including Bermuda, Nicaragua, Panama, and Paraguay. The app is already available in over a hundred countries, so it’s great to see more getting added.
Gmail and wallet just got better integration
If that wasn’t enough, this big update adds superpowers to Gmail, as well. Now, when you receive a confirmation email for a train ticket in Gmail, it will automatically appear in your Google Wallet. This joins movie tickets and loyalty cards, which already do this. Life really is getting easier.
Finally, the latest updates include enhancements to the closed loop transit API for developers. This means its easier to convert physical transit cards into digital cards for Google Wallet. The upgrade also updates security with VDV eTicket Services Motics spec, which protects digital tickets from copying and falsification.
Wallet is truly becoming a powerhouse app. Expanded Wear OS, Android, and web functions make it better than all the others, at least for now.