Google has done what Google loves to do: the application formerly known as Google Pay is renamed Google Wallet with the latest update. The payment service is still called Google Pay, but the app for making payments is called Google Wallet and expands its scope to be, as its name suggests, a digital wallet.
Google wants you to store everything in Wallet and not just your credit cards. In the new Google Wallet our payments will have a place, yes, but also paces, boarding passes, loyalty cards, vaccination passports, car keys, hotel keys, passports or driver’s license.
Upgrade to Google Wallet
We knew that changes were coming to Google’s payment app, Google Pay, as Google announced them to us during the last Google I/O in 2022, although several months have passed before the changes take effect. After updating the Google Wallet app to app version 2.150.460235810, the old Google Pay app becomes Google Wallet.
The update should reach all users in the next few hours or days, through Google Play, although if you don’t want to wait any longer, you can always update by downloading the APK from a reliable place, such as APKMirror. It installs like google pay updateso all your data is kept and, incidentally, Google Pay will disappear from your mobile.
The process is therefore as simple as downloading and installing the APK, although if you prefer not to mess around too much with your mobile, you can always wait for the update to arrive from Google Play. These are the steps to have Google Wallet on your mobile Immediately:
A wallet to pay and more
Google payments keep the name of Google Pay, but the application receives the name of Google Wallet again. We say “again” Google Wallet already existed back in 2014until being replaced by the old Android Pay, which would become Google Pay and now goes back to the beginning, under the name of Google Wallet.
The idea is to expand the scope of the application beyond payments, especially now that technology is opening up the possibilities to securely store more and more types of information such as identity documents or even car keys. Having the car keys or the COVID Certificate in a payment app doesn’t seem to make much sense, but it does when the app itself is presented with the concept of a broader wallet. Payments, and more.
In Google Wallet we have the same thing that we had in Google Pay but under a different name and with a somewhat different design. For now you can add payment cards, transport cards, loyalty cards and gift cards. That is to say, without many changes with respect to what we could already do with Google Pay. The changes will come later, when everything that Google promised us during the last Google I/O begins to be fulfilled.
Specifically, Google promises us that in the future Google Wallet will also include vaccination passes, car keys, hotel keys, passports, driver’s licenses and much more data, in addition to everything that was already available in Google Pay, and continues to be in Google Wallet. It is a move similar to that of Apple with Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, or Samsung with Samsung Pay and Samsung Wallet.
