The concept of a digital wallet and digital identification continues to take hold as many across the travel industry predict it is on the edge of a radical shift - even the United States government is pushing the technology forward.
Google announced Thursday its newest addition to its digital wallet as it works to spread awareness and adoption of digital ID technology.
“Today we announced a new type of digital ID in Google Wallet which can be created from a U.S. passport, allowing more people to create and save a digital ID even if their state has not yet launched a solution,” said Alan Stapelberg, group project manager for Google Wallet, in a release.
The technology giant is beta testing the new feature in the near future. Eventually, Google Wallet users who opt to create a digital ID from their passport should be able to use the identification form on their Android device at a number of select TSA checkpoints.
Already, Stapelberg said, people with certain U.S. state-issued IDs are able to present their digital ID via Google Wallet to pass through TSA in “dozens” of U.S. airports.
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In addition to its newest feature, the company also announced that Android users based in California will now be able to save their driver’s license or state-issued ID in the Google Wallet app. The same capability will be possible for users in Iowa, New Mexico and Ohio in the approaching months.
Commuters will also be able to add prepaid commuter cards to Google Wallet in the U.S. Commuters in Hamburg, Germany will now also be able to save their tickets to the wallet and Google is planning to unfurl new capabilities in Taiwan and Hong Kong for commuters, too.
All users will begin to receive notifications about pass changes - such as seat changes - and the wallet will be accessible not only from Android devices but also on wallet.google.com.