Last October, the total number of country IDs available in Google Wallet increased to four. “Digital ID will be a cornerstone for Google in the coming year” and support for more statuses will be coming to the Wallet app on Android.
This is according to what Dong Min Kim, Director of Product Management at Google Wallet, said in an interview with American banker Published last week, which also teased a “pipeline” of upcoming additions.
There is a pipeline of additional states that will be operational in the next few months, according to Kim.
The difficulty comes down to different approaches between local jurisdictions (state DMVs), with a Google employee noting how difficult the challenge is compared to mobile payment, which is more standardized by comparison.
When Google Wallet was announced at I/O 2022, the company’s stated goal was to replace physical wallets and make them virtual. This includes everything from credit and debit cards to transportation and event tickets, boarding passes, loyalty/gift cards, vaccination records, digital car keys, student IDs, and employee/office badges.
At the time, mobile driver’s licenses and state IDs were floated as an area for future expansion, and Maryland was the first state to activate it in December of that year.
Maryland was joined by Arizona, Colorado, and Georgia ten months later. Apple Wallet also includes those four states, but the company previously announced in September of 2021 that Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Utah would also support its efforts.
Looking beyond the United States, Kim said Google is working with other countries to add similar support.
Meanwhile, Google noted “people are storing content and all kinds of documents in Gmail and Google Drive” as a “personal hack” of sorts. Kim said the company believes “there could be a better way to do this using Google Wallet.” This centralization perhaps explains why the Files app is set to drop the “Important” tab for identity documents in India.
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