Adding new cards to your Google Wallet is a pretty painless process, but imagine if you could get it started with nothing more than a tap. Google appears to be tinkering with a more convenient way to beef up your Google Wallet.
According to a teardown of a recent Google Play Services beta, some interesting new features may be on the way to Google Wallet. The lines of code point directly to a process where you could simply hold your physical credit card against the back of your phone to add it to Google Wallet. The code includes prompts such as “Tap to add a card” and instructions to “Hold your card close to the back of your device until it vibrates.” This strongly suggests that Google is leveraging NFC to streamline the card-adding process.
string name=”bc25_nfc_add_a_card”>Tap to add a cardstring>
string name=”bc25_nfc_tap_card_details”>Hold your card close to the back of your device
until it vibrates string>
string name=”bc25_nfc_use_this_screen_text”>Tap card to phonestring>
Currently, if you want to add a card to Google Wallet, you typically have to go through a few steps. You either scan the card with your phone’s camera or manually type in the long card number, expiration date, and CVV. Then, you usually have to go through some sort of verification process with your bank to confirm it’s really you adding the card. While it’s not exactly an insurmountable hassle, it’s a process that could benefit from being even easier.
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If you have a lot of cards in your wallet, it can be a hassle to dig through it. Debit, credit, gift cards, bus passes, IDs, you name it—all of these things end up crammed into our wallet on most days. With Google Wallet, you can organize your cards easily and use them without a struggle.
This tap-to-add functionality isn’t entirely new. As 9to5Google points out, some banking apps, like Capital One, already allow you to use NFC to interact with your physical cards for various purposes. So, the underlying technology is certainly there. Integrating it directly into Google Wallet would just make the process of adding new payment methods faster, though it wouldn’t eliminate the bank verification part of the process.
Of course, it’s important to remember that just because code for a feature exists doesn’t guarantee it will ever see the light of day. Google tests and experiments with countless features, and not all of them make it to the final product. We have no idea when this feature might potentially launch, assuming it does at all. However, this is a simple enough feature that it’s likely we will indeed see it someday. With Google I/O 2025 on the horizon, it could be sooner than later.
Source: 9to5Google
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