Other Pixel phones won’t see any change, though
Google gave its payments app a fresh coat of paint earlier this year, complete with a new name and the ability to hold more than just your credit and loyalty cards. This year also brought us two of our favorite Android phones — the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. But unfortunately, we quickly learned about an annoying bug that was interfering with mobile payments when face unlock on the Pixel 7 was used. We’ve been following Google’s efforts to correct this behavior, which continue now through a new update to Wallet.
If you open Google Wallet using the lock screen shortcut or the Quick Settings tile, it currently shows an overlay with your saved payment methods. With the October Play Services update, Google announced that it will change how these shortcuts behave. Instead of showing that overlay screen, the shortcuts will directly take you to the Google Wallet app for a full app experience.
Google is rolling out an update to these Google Wallet shortcuts, which now open the app straightaway, skipping any intermediary screen (via 9to5Google). This new behavior is going live on the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro phones and worked as advertised in our testing. Just make sure that you’re on the latest Google Play Services version 22.48.14 to see the changes.
While this new Google Wallet shortcut behavior definitely seems to be tied to the face unlock problem, we’re still not sure exactly how it’s going to resolve things, since we’re not yet seeing the Wallet app ask for additional, more secure authentication methods like fingerprint or PIN after you have unlocked the Pixel 7 with your face. Hopefully, Google will address that soon.
