Google Wallet gets support for Apple Wallet passes, linked passes

Google Wallet is among the most used digital wallet apps in Western markets. It has now started supporting Apple Wallet passes, which is excellent, as many services offer passes for Apple Wallet. It has also received support for linked passes, which sometimes improve the user experience.

These Google Wallet features work on Galaxy phones, too.

Google Wallet now supports Apple Wallet passes, but it doesn’t work every time

Last month, Google Wallet started testing support for Apple Wallet passes (with .pkpass file extension), and it seems to have started rolling out that feature more widely in the US. It has been released through the latest Wallet and Play Services updates. It can now read data inside .pkpass files, which means you can add things like movie and travel tickets in the Google Wallet app.

The folks over at 9To5Google were able to add parking passes by clicking the ‘Add to Apple Wallet’ button, which allowed them to download the pass and import it into the Google Wallet app. However, they couldn’t add a baseball game ticket to Google Wallet, as the website asked them to download the pass using the Safari web browser.

An alternative method requires an iPhone. You can add the pass via Apple Wallet on an iPhone, email the pass file to yourself, open it on an Android phone, and import it into Google Wallet. However, this is too cumbersome, and most people don’t have two phones, let alone an Android phone and an iPhone.

Google Wallet also supports linked passes

Google Wallet has received a feature (via 9To5Google) that allows it to ‘Automatically Add Linked Passes.’ The new feature is enabled by default in the Passes section of the app. Pass providers can use this feature to automatically add passes or tickets related to an event, offer, or promotion.

For example, passes can be added for offers linked to an existing loyalty card. A meal voucher pass can be added along with a flight boarding pass or an event ticket. It also allows a parking pass alongside an event ticket. All these are pretty convincing use cases.