Google Wallet for Wear OS now shows airline boarding passes

After adding loyalty card support in December, Google Wallet for Wear OS has gained support for showing airline boarding passes.

On your Wear OS 3.5+ device, you’ll see a new notification — Boarding pass for your flight to [AIRPORT] — from the on-watch Google Wallet app. Tapping “View pass” simply shows the QR code for quick tapping at the gate. 

When Google rolled out loyalty card support in December, it was just for simple membership programs and other passes. COVID cards, health insurance cards, and private passes were excluded.

We saw this go live yesterday (on a Pixel Watch 2) and there’s another report of that today in the US, while others say they saw this capability in December.

It’s a long overdue addition that helps make Google Wallet for Wear OS much richer by taking over more phone capabilities. 

On the transportation front, Google announced last October that Wallet would better support open-loop transit systems by showing how much you’ve spent in a day or week along with ride history. This is rolling out first in the UK.

Similarly, Google Wallet on phones and Wear OS now support: Clipper cards (BART) in San Francisco, SmarTrip in Washington, DC, and PRESTO for Toronto in Canada. Update: ORCA in Seattle and the Puget Sound Region was announced, but not yet available.

More on Google Wallet:

• More state IDs coming to Google Wallet in next few months
• Google Wallet notifications will be sent directly from the app [U]
• Google Wallet now lets you share boarding passes, complete with web access