At yesterday’s Google I/O conference, the company not only introduced a new middle range smartphone Pixel 6a, Pixel Watch, new flagships Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Buds Pro, but also announced a revival of Google Wallet – a virtual wallet for storing bank cards and various documents.

At one time, Google already had an app with this name, but in 2018, the company merged the then Google Wallet with Android Pay and named the new service Google Pay, which we still use. However, Google clearly lacked an app with Apple Wallet features, and it looks like the new Google Wallet will fix that.

The application will store a variety of documents: bank cards, plane or concert tickets, digital IDs, car keys, vaccination certificates, digital hotel keys and more. In short, Google is seriously trying to free the user from the need to carry a “physical” wallet. Some features are easy to implement – tickets or vaccination certificates can be simply photographed, and the application recognizes and adds them automatically, while others will probably be more “hassle” – for example, adding IDs requires company interaction with the authorities.

In most countries, Google Wallet will completely replace Google Pay, but in some markets (US, India and Singapore) Google Pay will remain – but will only be used to transfer money between friends, while payments will be made through Wallet. As you can see, Google would not be Google if it did not decide to confuse users again with the names and features of their applications.

Google Wallet will be available for Android and Wear OS devices in 42 countries (including Ukraine) at the time of launch this summer.