During Google I/O, plans were announced to add support for digital office and hotel keys to its digital wallet app, in addition to digital IDs and car keys. It would also come with a "rebranding" that does not change the name of the payment service itself, as "Google Pay" is still in use. The name of the app has been changed to Google Wallet.
Google Wallet, the app that will replace Google Pay in many countries (more on that in a moment), has started to show up on people phones. According to Google spokesperson Chaiti Sen, the company has “started rolling out the Wallet to Android users in 39 countries,” and it’ll be available “to all users over the next few days.”
Google Wallet was announced at the 2022 I/O event, pitching it as an app to manage all of your digital cards — not just for payment, like debit and credit cards (though it does hold those), but also for digital representations of your identification, vaccination status, tickets, keys, and more.
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| (Img © Google I/O) |
Wallet will replace the current Google Pay app in the majority of countries. (As per 9to5 Google reports, this is currently being rolled out as an update to Google Pay.) However, Google stated that users in the United States and Singapore will be able to use both Google Pay and Wallet. Pay will be available in those countries as a way to send money to friends.
Google had several iterations of Wallet before it was launched today. In 2011, it was an NFC payments app, and it evolved to include other payment features, such as peer-to-peer money transfer (at one point there was even a physical Google Wallet debit card). In 2018, Google combined it with Android Pay to form Google Pay. Now -- in most places, at least -- that app is turning back into a wallet. It's another major change in a long line of shake-ups for Google payments apps, but hopefully it will make it easier to store digital cards and pay from your Android phone.