Google Pay will now reportedly allow users to add loyalty cards and rewards cards simply by shopping with those cards in-store. The change makes it easier to add the cards, to begin with.
Ordinarily, users need to navigate through the app’s settings and submenus to add a card manually or have them linked up with a Gmail account. Google’s latest change appears to make that automatic.
Discovered almost purely by accident, now users effectively just need to shop with Google Pay to add the cards. After using their loyalty card alongside a purchase, a notification will arrive on-device to add the card. The card is shown alongside membership details for confirmation. A simple tap on the “Save” button adds the card for future use.
Loyalty cards help Google Pay replace physical wallets
The addition of loyalty cards and rewards cards from in-store purchases isn’t entirely unexpected. Users can already see similar cards brought over from purchases made online with Google Pay via a Gmail account. So there really haven’t been too many features left for Google to add and automating things seems like a logical step.
In particular, this newest feature should prove useful for those who don’t regularly open the app or who weren’t aware of the features.
Among the more prominent of recent alterations, many seem to center around a new API spotted months ago. Namely, that’s the IdentityCredential API. That API goes so far as to allow personal cards such as state-issued IDs and Drivers Licenses to be stored digitally. Presumably, those would be stored in Google Pay like the most recently added cards in the app’s Passes tab.
Whether or not a digitally stored card could be used just like the physical card is less clear. There are likely still plenty of hurdles to overcome before that can happen. Regardless, that’s the direction Google is going with its digital wallet services.
The changes recently haven’t all been focused on loyalty cards and rewards in Google Pay either. Users can also bring over tickets, offers, and boarding passes. Those are pulled over from Gmail too, providing all of that information under a single application. Google’s push here seems to be to eliminate the need for physical wallets entirely by moving things to apps instead.
This could just be under testing
Although the latest feature is a logical step up from those Google has already added, it isn’t expected either.
It may be the case that the new automation in Google Pay is still effectively under testing. Because the notification containing the suggestion is purported to arrive after the store has been left, there appears to be some delay in the process. That might be deliberate.
Delaying the notification and interaction prevents the app from interrupting the purchase process. Google would be making things less disruptive for customers and stores alike by delaying it until they’ve left the counter.
But Google doesn’t seem to have made an effort to tout the new feature publicly. That seems to suggest that Google isn’t quite ready to go public with the feature. Conversely, it may just be testing to make sure the experience isn’t broken with a select subset of users before finalizing and releasing the feature.