Google Expands Digital ID and Commuter Capabilities in Wallet

Google announced new digital ID and commuter capabilities for Wallet as it moves ever closer to an all-digital future for personal identification.

“Imagine starting a vacation like this: You arrive at the airport and breeze through security by tapping your phone to a reader, scanning your boarding pass and ID,” Google Wallet’s Alan Stapelberg writes of the future his company hopes to enable. “While waiting to board, you grab a drink at an airport bar, tapping your phone to prove your age. When you arrive at your destination, you find your rental car and leave the lot without stopping for an in-person ID check because you already provided the necessary information in the rental car app. You check into your hotel online and your key is issued straight to your digital wallet. You do all of this with your phone — no physical wallet required.”

Most of those capabilities are not available today. But Google, like Apple, is working to make it a reality by expanding its Google Wallet app and service into digital identification (digital ID). This started in the U.S. with select states signing on to allow citizens to securely identify themselves using a digital representation of their driver’s license or state ID. But it’s a short list. Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, and Maryland support both Google Wallet and Apple Wallet. California is available only in Google Wallet, though Iowa, New Mexico, and Ohio are coming to Google Wallet soon. Today, Hawaii and Ohio are only available in Apple Wallet.

Recently, Google revealed that users could use their Wallet-based digital ID to go through TSA security checkpoints in dozens of U.S. airports, though they’re still required to carry their physical identification as well. And now it will soon expand its digital ID capabilities to include a U.S. passport.

“We’ll soon begin beta testing a new type of digital ID in Google Wallet, giving more people in more places a way to create and store a digital ID, now with a U.S. passport,” Google Wallet vice president and general manager Jenny Cheng explains. “This new ID pass works at select TSA checkpoints, saving you time and stress at the airport when you’re traveling domestically.”

As noted, digital ID availability and capabilities are both extremely limited right now, but Google (like Apple) says it’s working with government agencies and regulators to improve the former and with third parties to improve the latter. It sees digital IDs being used for such things as account recovery, identity verification, and even car rentals in the future.

In addition to its digital ID capabilities, Google Wallet is expanding to support more transit cards for commuters. It now works with Edenred and HealthEquity prepaid commuter benefit cards, and the public transit system in Hamburg, Germany, and will soon work with public transit systems in Hong Kong (Octopus Card) and Taiwan (PASS Card). And Google Wallet will soon offer live train status updates from Wallet-based tickets and automatic ticket importing from Gmail.

You can learn more on the Google Wallet website.