Google appears to be preparing for Google Wallet to make a return to Android.
Last week there were reports of a return for Google Wallet, together with images of the new app icon. Now Twitter user Mishaal Rahman (via Android Police) has posted some screenshots of the UI for a new dedicated Wallet service.
This new take on Wallet appears to be pitched as a true digital wallet for all of your cards, whether payment, gift, loyalty, or transport tickets. The app’s settings menu appears to mention that the new Google Wallet will pull in passes and tickets from your Gmail account automatically, much like Google Pay can do right now.
Indeed, this new take on Google Wallet doesn’t appear to be a stand alone app at all, but rather a new UI living within Google Play Services. To this end, the leaked screenshots appear to indicate that your passes and cards will be accessible throughout the Android UI, judging from the message to “learn how passes in your Wallet will appear across Google”.
This doesn’t appear to be a massive revamp for Apple Pay, then, but rather a fresh siloing of card management into a resurrected system-spanning Google Wallet service, while card payments continue to be handled through the existing Google Pay app.
Google Wallet was the initial name for Google’s NFC payment app when it first rolled out in 2011, before becoming more of a peer-to-peer payment system.
The company rolled the original Google Wallet’s functions together with Android Pay into the new unified Google Pay app back in 2018. Now, however, there are signs that Google Wallet could be set for a comeback.
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