I don’t use Google Wallet as my main wallet app for payment from my Samsung Galaxy S21. I prefer Samsung Wallet to anything else, as it’s the best wallet app for anyone with a supported NFC-enabled Galaxy smartphone.
However, I keep going back to the Google Wallet app for one reason: passes. Nobody handles passes better than Google Wallet right now, but that’s also its Achilles’ heel.
That’s what I felt a few days ago when I found out a major drawback in the way Google Wallet handles passes.
I won’t say my praise for Google Wallet has taken a nosedive since then, but I certainly don’t have the same high regard for the app.
To be fair to Google, it doesn’t do much wrong, but given the precedent it has set, I expected better from the Mountain View tech giant in the way it handles passes.
Google Wallet is still the best place for passes, but its handling leaves me frustrated at times. Here is why.
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I tried it out of curiosity rather than with the real intention of switching from Samsung Wallet.
I’m proud I gave it a try because it made me realize how well Google Wallet does passes and tickets.
More than anything else, I was blown away when I saw the Google Wallet app showing the ticket for a Bollywood movie that I booked sometime after switching to the app.
I didn’t add it manually to the Google Wallet app. The app automatically imported it from the email that I received from the ticket issuer in my Gmail inbox. That’s real smartness.
Not only that, but it also auto-archived the ticket and removed it from the home page a few days after the movie was over. So, the Google Wallet home page remains clean, making it easier for users to find and show other event tickets in the future.
However, it doesn’t work this smoothly. While it works perfectly with most large ticketing platforms across the world, I have faced instances where Google Wallet failed to import the ticket from the confirmation email in my Gmail inbox.
Google also knows that it’s not perfect, and that’s the reason Google Wallet also allows users to add tickets or passes manually by taking a photo of them or uploading screenshots.
I love this as a backup solution. It gives users an alternative when auto-import doesn’t work, and that’s all that’s good about it.
While it works as well as you would want, Google Wallet handles manually added passes poorly after the event is over. In many such cases, it fails to archive the tickets when the event is over, unlike when it imports from Gmail.
I booked a ticket for a Test cricket match between India and South Africa several months ago and had to add it manually to the Google Wallet app.
I was surprised to see the ticket for the cricket match still available on the Google Wallet home page a couple of weeks ago.
The pass didn’t disappear until I archived it manually.
I refuse to give Google a free pass for this
It’s the responsibility of the ticket issuer to set the date and validity of the ticket properly for Google Wallet to spot them.
However, the ticket I booked to watch the cricket match clearly mentioned the date and time, and that it was for the second day of the five-day Test match.
As a user, I don’t care about the technicalities of why Google Wallet failed to auto-archive it.
Even if the organizers failed to mention the necessary details, Google Wallet should at least notify users about the number of tickets that hadn’t been auto-archived and seek permission if they want to archive them.
This is the bare minimum. Ideally, Google should improve its wallet app’s ability to take cues from details the organizer mentions in the email and predict when the event will be over.
If Google could use AI and do magical things with it without making them look hard, it should be able to make such predictions based on certain details.
Since it’s making assumptions, it’s important for Google to always confirm with users if it got it right. If this sounds complicated, just let users mention the end date and time when manually adding passes.
This is perhaps the easiest way for the app to auto-archive manually added tickets. However, we haven’t seen any efforts from the company to fix this.
I hate that I’ll keep coming back to Google Wallet for passes
I hate to say this, but I’ll keep coming back to Google Wallet only because of its deep integration with Gmail. I hate it because it gives Google Wallet an undue advantage over other wallet apps.
For example, I don’t think Google will allow Samsung and other players to implement the same Gmail integration on their wallet apps.
Google Wallet simply benefits from the billions of users worldwide using a Gmail account. While I applaud the company for making such a cohesive ecosystem, it sounds unfair to everyone who doesn’t have an email service to offer.
That’s the analytical side of me speaking. As a user, I would always want the best service with the least friction.
And when it comes to handling passes, no one comes close to Google Wallet, even though there is still plenty of room for improvement.
