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Date: May 09, 2024

Google has relaunched its latest wallet application in India as a one-stop storage solution for all important non-payment digital assets.

Which payment gateway do you use to make UPI and NFC payments in India? Is Google Pay your favorite app for conducting such activities securely? Then, Google brought a new application to secure non-payment digital assets on one platform for easier access and industry-best safeguards. Google Wallet is returning to the lives of Android phone users in India by relaunching with a new interface, more security layers, and Google’s assured top-quality service.

Google has launched Google Wallet only for Android mobile users in India and has no plans to launch it for iOS devices anytime soon. The company also plans to limit its wallet service to India, as it is one of the most prominent economies pushing digitalization. The support of government entities in the digitalization push facilitates innovation at scale for the tech giant.

“We’ve focused on making sure the journey from paper to digital is seamless. Google Pay is not going anywhere. Google Pay is our primary payment use case, and it solves all payment needs in India. Wallet is specifically tailored for non-payment use cases,” said Ram Papatla, Gm and India Engineering Lead for Android and Google.

Google Wallet can store tickets, movie passes, airline boarding passes, reward cards, vouchers, digital car keys, and many other digital assets critical to Indian consumers' everyday use. It acts as a smart storage of digital information that a user would need to access instantly, on demand.

In India, Google Wallet will be used only for non-payment uses, and Google Play will remain a separate entity for online and in-store payments. The Google Wallet comes with automatic fetching capabilities from multiple vendor partners it has onboarded. The company is continuously expanding its vendor partner network to facilitate more digital assets in a single place.

The brand-new Google Wallet app is available to download from the Play Store in India. Google Wallet is not a new offering by the tech giant; it was launched in 2011 as a payment service for use at select shops with readers. However, the app’s key features only worked on the Nexus phone. The new Google Wallet will be a default pre-loaded app in Pixel devices across India. It will also have a lock screen shortcut. Around 97% of smartphones in India are powered by Google’s Android services, making it a great market to tap easily.

By Arpit Dubey

Arpit is a dreamer, wanderer, and a tech nerd who loves to jot down tech musings and updates. With a logician mind, he is always chasing sunrises and tech advancements while secretly preparing for the robot uprising.