Google Wallet is coming out of retirement. Four years after Google shelved the concept so it could streamline all digital payments activity within Google Pay, or G Pay, the company is bringing the its first wallet brand back to perform another job.
At its annual Google I/O developers conference on Wednesday, Google announced it’s relaunching Google Wallet as a place to store transit, travel, loyalty and health care credentials, operating as a companion app to Google Pay, which remains the primary app for conducting transactions.
The move addresses the expanding number of digital credentials including transit and event tickets, vaccination cards and other records that have been cluttering the Google Pay experience, according to Arnold Goldberg, vice president and general manager of payments at Google.
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“The pandemic was one of the catalysts for the latest change with Google Wallet, when we saw merchants go digital and experienced the acceleration of digitization for everyday essentials, so we created two separate apps: Google Wallet for all the things you’d carry in your wallet and Google Pay only for payment-related activities,” Goldberg said.
The change is effective immediately in the U.S., bringing Google’s wallet and payment ecosystems closer into alignment with Apple, which years ago created a Wallet app to store digital credentials to use for Apple Pay transactions.
Separating Google Wallet from Google Pay also paves the way for Google to follow Apple by collaborating with states across the U.S. and international partners to bring
Google also plans to enable developers to add digital IDs for office and hotel key access to Google Wallet, while it’s creating a path for developers to create QR codes or bar codes to enable many of these features for older phones, the company said.
Google also announced the launch of tokenized virtual cards within Google Pay, improving security for in-app payments and building on its existing auto-fill process for online shopping. Virtual cards will be available this summer beginning with Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Capital One cards, encrypting account data for improved security and ease of use. Once a Google Pay user has enrolled a card, users have the option to make the card virtual and afterward there is no need to re-enter the card's security code, streamlining checkouts.
Within Google Pay, users can now send peer-to-peer payments, split payments and pay businesses digitally or via NFC. They can also access cash-back rewards from retailers and brand marketers, with all transaction activity visible within the Google Pay app.
“We’re not a bank, nor do we have any intention of becoming one, but we are all about connecting various providers of services with the consumers that are using them,” Goldberg said.
As more industries digitize processes and assets, Google Wallet can become the go-to app for more everyday activities that will be connected, he said.
“Working with other platforms and integrators, we’re creating experiences where you add a transit card to your wallet, and in [Google] Maps it will show up with the current balance on the card,” Goldberg said.
The latest move brings Google Wallet back to a more central role within the Android experience. Initially Google Wallet was a payment app that supported only Citi-branded Mastercards on Sprint handsets, and it struggled to gain adoption with hardware makers. Google later created the software-based “host card emulation” mode to get around handset security issues with Google Wallet.
Next came Android Pay, which Google launched in 2015 as its primary in-store digital payment mode while Google Wallet was relegated to a P2P payments feature.
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Google isn't concerned about consumer confusion over the latest switch.
“What was more confusing was the way consumers had to put nonpayment-related things [like transit tickets] into Google Pay, and now they have a separate app for those things,” Goldberg said.
