Bye, Google Pay: Google Wallet is now making a comeback

Panagiotis Kolokythas

updated:

Now, as announced (see below), it happened: the Google Pay app disappeared from our Android smartphone in the last few hours and was replaced by the Google Wallet app. In the Google Play Store, Google Wallet is available here. If you search for Google Pay in the Google Play Store or on the Android device, the search result will be “Google Wallet”.

The first time Google Wallet is accessed, users will be notified of the change. “Your Google Pay app has a new design and is now called Google Wallet,” Google explains to users. Everything stays the same, just gets easier. Users do not have to set up anything new. Stored cards are automatically transferred to Google Wallet.

Additional payment cards, travel cards, loyalty points, gift cards, boarding passes or event tickets, among other things, can be added via “Add to wallet”. The “Intelligent functions and personalization in other Google products” function can be activated in the Gmail settings, which means that boarding passes received via email, for example, end up directly in Google Wallet.

Original message from July 19, 2022:

The end of the “Google Pay” app is getting closer: Google has started to deliver the “Google Wallet” app to users. Users will receive an update through the Google Play Store that will replace “Google Pay” with “Google Wallet”. The first users are already receiving this update, as reported by 9to5google.com. Ultimately, this is version 2.150.460235810 of the Google Pay app, which changes the name of the app. A Google spokesman told The Verge that “Android users in 39 countries” will receive the corresponding app in the “next few days”.

This is what Google Wallet offers

Google presented “Google Wallet” at Google I/O 2022. With the digital wallet, users should not only be able to make contactless payments via NFC, but also store all of their customer and award cards, tickets, digital keys, vaccination certificates and boarding passes. Later also digital driving licenses and more.

“Google Wallet” is not really new anyway. The app already had this name in the early 2010s, but was renamed “Google Pay” later in the year after the functions of “Google Wallet” were combined with those of “Android Pay”. Now it is renamed back to “Google Wallet”.

According to Google, “Google Wallet” will replace the previous “Google Pay” app in almost 40 countries, including Germany and many other European countries. In the US and Singapore, however, there will still be two separate apps: Google Pay and Google Wallet. This is because in these countries the “Google Pay” app can also be used to send money to friends quickly.