Google India has officially launched Google Wallet App in India after it began becoming available for some users a couple of weeks back. The official announcement of Google Wallet says that it will allow users to conveniently store and retrieve important digital documents like boarding passes, loyalty cards, movie tickets, and more.
Google Wallet India: Features
Google says that Wallet complements Google Pay, which will continue to serve the payments needs of users across India. At launch, Google has partnered with 20 of India’s top brands to enable the Google Wallet experience, including PVR & INOX, Air India, Indigo, Flipkart, Pine Labs, Kochi Metro, Abhibus and many others, with more partners to be added in the months to follow.
Partnering with PVR and INOX, Android users can now conveniently add their movies and event tickets to their Google Wallet. Boarding passes for travellers flying with airlines like Air India, Air India Express, and online travel companies like MakeMyTrip, Easemytrip, and Ixigo, will be made available inside Google Wallet. As a bonus, Pixel device users can add their boarding pass to their Google Wallet by simply taking a screenshot and tapping “Add to Google Wallet.”
With Flipkart (Supercoins), Dominos, Shoppers Stop, and brands supported by loyalty program enablers Pinelabs, EasyRewardz and Twid, shoppers can now store and use digital copies of their loyalty and gift cards. Kochi Metro, Hyderabad Metro, VRL Travels, and Abhibus, travelers can easily store their transit tickets.
System integrators like Wavelynx and Alert Enterprise will allow for easier workspace access through the ability to store and access a corporate badge in Google Wallet. One can create new passes in Wallet from any image containing a barcode or QR code, like airline boarding passes, luggage tags, or parking receipts. After booking a movie ticket, IPL ticket, or train ticket, the event confirmation sent to a person’s Gmail account will automatically appear in their Google Wallet, if they have smart personalization settings in Gmail turned on.
Google Wallet has now launched for Android users in India and is available for download from the Google Play Store.
Google Wallet Vs Samsung Wallet
Google Wallet’s main competitor in India is the Samsung Wallet. While both of them offer similar functionality in terms of how you can add boarding passes, gift cards, and other IDs but Samsung Pay is one step ahead when it comes to payments. It allows you to add your debit or credit cards in the same place as the gift cards and boarding passes. However, in Google’s case, you can do the same but with Google Pay and not Google Wallet. This can create an inconvenience of switching apps all the time whenever you want to view your passes and whenever you want to make payments.
Both of them offer gift cards from various companies whom they have partnered with, but at the time of writing this article, Samsung Wallet seems to have more partners such as Myntra, Levi’s and more while Google has only a few.
One of the other major advantages of Samsung Wallet is DigiLocker integration so you can keep your identity cards handy and can access it quickly and conveniently. At the time of launch, Google Wallet doesn’t support DigiLocker.
While Samsung Wallet is definitely the superior one out of the two, availability is where it lacks as it can only be used on Samsung devices. On the other hand, Google Wallet can be used on most Android devices including those from Samsung. To sum up, if you are a Samsung user, Samsung Wallet would serve you best, thanks to a tighter integration with the OS and more features. However, if you are a non-Samsung user, Google Wallet paired with Google Pay is the closest experience you can get to a Samsung Wallet and would be your best bet.