- Google Wallet may soon let you assign nicknames to transit passes.
- While some signs of this functionality are present in the latest Google Play Services beta, others are not yet functional.
- Not all transit passes may ultimately be supported.
Smartphones are tiny computers, so it’s little wonder that they like working with information that’s nicely and neatly organized, all expressed formally. Problem is, we’re the ones who have to use them, and we are far from 100% logical, formal creatures. How often does that manifest in us turning to nicknames for labels — that guy who’s not in your contacts as “Brian James Miller,” but “Work Brian?” For people who get a lot of mileage out of this kind of shorthand, we’ve got some good news for you, as we check out the latest development work on Google Wallet.
Technically, we’re not quite looking at Wallet itself right now, as we investigate version 24.31.33 beta of Google Play Services. That software does the heavy lifting for a lot of Google apps behind the scenes, and that’s very much the case with Wallet. Right now, Wallet already lets you assign nicknames to your payment cards — and if you’re juggling more than a few, that’s an easy way to keep track of which you want to be using, when.