It seems Android Pay is about to gain a new feature which should cut down on the amount of time Android Pay users spend with adding cards to their account. That is, membership cards and rewards cards. At the moment the new feature is not quite live, but traces of the feature have now been spotted buried within the latest version of the app by Android Police. So while there are no firm details on when the feature is likely to go live, its presence does suggest it will be switched on at some point in the near future.
As for the feature, the general idea here seems to be a time-saving one. While users are generally expected to add their credit or debit card information to the app, users are not obliged to add membership cards. Although, it probably is beneficial to those Android Pay users to have their member cards on file. Especially if they are ones that the user actually does use. And this is where the new feature comes in as it seems that once a user completes an Android Pay transaction, and uses a physical membership card – that is not currently registered with the Android Pay app – the app will send the user a notification asking if they would like to automatically add the membership card to their Android Pay account. In other words, it you want to add a new membership card, all you will likely need to do is flash the card during store checkout and Android Pay will know about it.
Aside from this feature, the teardown does not reveal too much else in terms of upcoming features. Although there does seem to be trace evidence suggesting that support for more stores is coming. In particular, support for Android Pay at the likes of Gap, Banana Republic, Athleta, and Old Navy. Although once again, it is not quite clear when support for these stores will actually go live. At present, the app just seems to show that it is preparing for those stores. For reference, this is version 1.24 of the Android Pay app, which should be rolling out to devices soon.