Android phones and tablets generally work well for years, even after they stop receiving operating system updates, but at some point it becomes difficult to continue supporting them. Unfortunately, Google Wallet is now dropping support for older Android devices.
Google Wallet is dropping support for Android devices that are older than Android 9. This means that phones running Android 8.1 or lower won’t receive any more updates for the wallet app, and the app won’t work on these older phones. The previous minimum version was Android 7.0. A majority of Android phones in the wild are running at least Android 9, so this change shouldn’t be too painful for a lot of people. In fact, if you happen to have a phone that doesn’t support at least Android 9, you should probably get to changing it anyway. For smartwatches, you’ll need at least Wear OS 2 for the Wallet app to work properly.
It’s a particularly painful loss for owners of these phones, as it means that tap-to-pay payments, at least with your phone, will stop working if you’re in one of these versions. This is part of a larger push to move users away from older versions, sure, but in this case, the reasoning Google is giving actually makes sense.
Android phones with versions older than Android 9 are not receiving security updates anymore, and if you’re keeping your bank and payment details on your phone, you probably don’t really want someone to be able to access it or pull info from it. There’s a reason why Google Wallet typically breaks when you install a beta Android version on your phone—it’s really strict about functioning only in a secure environment, and it’s a miracle it was still working in these older versions.
As a fun fact, some Android 9 phones are not receiving security updates anymore either, but the situation there is certainly better than how it is on older versions right now. If you want to keep using tap-to-pay, you should probably get a new phone or use the contactless feature that’s built into your actual plastic card. Just be careful of skimmers.
Source: Google Support via 9to5Google
