A series of screenshots have revealed the interface for Google Pay’s new ‘Wallet’ feature that users will use for storing digital cards.
A series of screenshots have revealed the interface for Google Pay‘s new ‘Wallet’ feature that users will use to store digital cards. The development comes a few months after the company confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg that it is looking to add a slew of new features to its payments app to make it a more comprehensive digital wallet, including possible support for crypto payments. Google had earlier hired former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to work on the new features.
According to the report, some of the new and upcoming features in Google Pay would include support for airline passes, vaccine passports, loyalty cards, and more as part of the company’s strategy to offer a broader range of financial services through the app. While there’s been no new development on that front until now, the latest screenshots suggest that Google Pay is well on its way to adding these new features in the foreseeable future.
The latest screenshots of the Google Pay app suggest that Google might be planning to revive the ‘Wallet’ branding that was retired several years ago. The Wallet feature will reportedly reside within the Google Pay app and store all digital cards, including transit cards, loyalty cards, gift cards, and credit and debit cards. The screenshots were posted on Twitter earlier today by Mishaal Rahman, senior technical editor at Esper and former editor-in-chief of XDA. Rahman later added several additional screenshots, one of which revealed the new Wallet icon. The wallet icon was initially spotted by 9to5Google earlier this month.
Here’s a look at what could be the new “Wallet” interface within Google Play Services. Seems Google Pay is still the branding for contactless payments, but the interface for all your digital cards may be branded as Wallet (back to square one, eh?) pic.twitter.com/ezn3iPMDZa
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) April 18, 2022
A More Comprehensive Digital Wallet
Currently, all digital cards are stored within the Google Pay app, although the new screenshots would suggest that the company is now earmarking a separate space within the app for storing these cards. While there are some speculations online over whether Google wants to replace the ‘Google Pay’ branding with ‘Google Wallet,’ nothing currently would conclusively suggest so. The company last year dropped plans to offer Plex bank accounts, and the latest developments would indicate an increased focus on non-payment cards and possibly even crypto payments in the future.
Google Wallet was once the name of Google’s peer-to-peer payments service that allowed people and businesses to send and receive money via mobile phones and computers. In 2018, Google merged it with Android Pay and renamed the merged entity Google Pay. The Google Wallet branding has also been done away with, and the peer-to-peer payments system within Google Pay is now called Google Pay Send. If the latest developments are anything to go by, Google is likely all set to bring back the Wallet branding. However, it remains to be seen if it will only be a feature within the larger Google Pay app or a complete rebranding of the app itself.
Source: Mishaal Rahman/Twitter (1, 2), 9to5Google