Google Wallet is the singular destination for viewing all your credit/debit cards, passes, tickets, digital car keys, etc., while also supporting tap-to-pay transactions on yourAndroid smartphone. But there’s always room for improvement, and the service is now making things easier for users by automatically pulling info from Gmail to add boarding passes and movie tickets to Wallet.
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In some good news for frequent users, the latest Google Walletrelease noteshave confirmed (viaMishaal Rahman) that boarding passes and movie tickets will be automatically added to Wallet using the email confirmation from Gmail. This new functionality “is live for some global movie chains and airlines,” Google said, adding that it will expand to other brands imminently.
In its current form, Google Wallet requires users to manually add details for their movie tickets through theAdd to Google Walletbutton after checkout at the ticketing partner’s site. For boarding passes, users can open the flight ticket’s PDF confirmation and take a screenshot with the airline’s QR or barcode centered on the screen, perGoogle’s support page.
At this point, it’s unclear if the new auto-add mechanism will scan the PDF file attached to the confirmation or just the text of the email. But this is a good feature addition nonetheless, and one we feel should never have been removed, but more on that later. It’s worth noting that Apple iOS currently doesn’t support auto-adding passes or tickets to its app (also called Wallet) via emails.
In addition to this new change, Wallet users can now manually archive passes/tickets in the app. This will work on both smartphones and Wear OS smartwatches, Google says, with archived passes moving to anArchived Passessection, previously known asExpired Passes. A 9to5Google reportlast weektouched on this manual archiving functionality in Google Wallet, and it now appears to be more widely available.
Having boarding passes and movie tickets automatically appear on Google Wallet certainly sounds convenient, but it’s not new. Back when Google Pay was still a thing (RIP), the companyrolled out auto-importsfor “loyalty cards, tickets and offers” via the app’s settings, so this looks more like a repackaged version of the same idea, but for Google Wallet. The service is not unfamiliar with changes and has already witnessed a couple of rebrands, only togo back to the old name in 2022.
