Google Wallet is evolving into a convenient replacement for your actual wallet, transforming your smartphone into a receptacle for digital IDs, currency, bank cards, tickets, and other passes. The app’s developers have been on a streak, with new features or news of their expanding availability streaming in regularly. Now, the company is integrating support for workplace ID cards, helping Google Wallet become one of thebest digital wallet appsyou could count on.
Google Wallet allows storing various physical documents without lugging them around on printed plastic cards or sheets of paper. The app already supports government-issued IDs like driving licenses in several states, vaccination cards, event tickets, andboarding passes for flights. More recently, the company has expanded support for government IDs tonew statessuch as Arizona, Colorado, and Georgia, while bringing new features to all its users, likeeasier tap-to-pay systemsfor commuters and support for sharing passes. Wallet also allows you todigitize all the unsupported documentsand passes, like library cards and gym memberships, which are usually non-standard by design.
We can attribute this flurry of recent additions topromises Google madeat the beginning of June this year. Several months have passed since, but the company is finally giving Wallet users the ability to add their employee ID cards to the app. Unless your workplace has strict rules about having an ID on display on the job, a digital ID in Google Wallet could finally help bid that tacky lanyard goodbye. In a silent update tosupport documentation, Google confirmed the change will reach Wallet users via the Play services update to version 23.44.
Multinational companies take privacy and data security very seriously, even logging when staffers access certain facilities or areas of the office. These cards usually rely on magnetic stripes, RFID, barcodes, proximity sensors, or some combination of the above. Most of these cards can be conveniently digitized so that your phone becomes the only thing you need to carry to the cafeteria and back.
Google doesn’t specify a rollout timeline, but we should start seeing digital workplace IDs quite soon. Meanwhile, the same Play services update will also enable Wallet notifications for IDs which still require verification. This should make it easier to set up digital IDs for reliable use in the future.
