Google Wallet on Wear OS isn’t as convenient as it could be

Of all the tech-enabled conveniences we’ve come to take for granted, tap-to-pay in wearables is, for my money, one of the most satisfyingly futuristic — the very idea of using your wristwatch to pay for something flatly didn’t exist until relatively recently. Even now, nearly a decade into living with watches that are also wallets, I still get a little techy satisfaction any time I pay for something using my Pixel Watch. But as much as I appreciate the ability to use my wrist computer to pay for coffee, I think the Google Wallet experience on Wear OS could be significantly improved with what seems to me like a simple UX tweak.

Let us pay without opening the app

It’s less secure, but not by much

As it stands today, buying something with Google Wallet on Wear OS requires you to open the Google Wallet app before tapping your watch to a contactless payment terminal. Different watches work differently, but in the case of the Pixel Watch 2 I’m typically wearing, you can most easily fire up Wallet by double-tapping the watch’s digital crown. Once it’s open, tap-to-pay is ready. All told, it’s hardly an inconvenient system as is.

But having to get the app open first introduces just a little extra friction that makes the experience feel less seamless than it could. On mobile, provided you have a default card set in Wallet and aren’t using the Pixel 7 Pro’s wonky face unlock feature, tapping your unlocked phone to a payment terminal will initiate a payment with your default method, whether or not you have the Wallet app open. Essentially, I want to see that approach on Wear OS, too.

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That may sound risky, but hear me out. Just like on a phone, using Google Wallet on Wear OS requires that your watch has a screen lock set. Once you’ve unlocked your watch, it stays unlocked until you take it off, at which time it immediately locks again. Having to manually open Wallet before making a payment does further mitigate some risks, like making a tap-to-pay payment you didn’t intend to or having your payment information read without your permission by nearby bad actors. But given NFC in smartwatches only has a range of a couple of inches, I feel those threats are very remote.

Personally, I’d be willing to chance it for the option to use tap-to-pay any time my watch is unlocked. Physical credit cards have no payment method-side authentication for contactless payments at all, so compared to that, my watch locking when it’s off my wrist already feels plenty secure without the additional step of opening Google Wallet first.

Make it an option, not the default

I just want a toggle

In light of NFC’s range limitations and Google Wallet’s inherent security — the digital cards on your watch have numbers unique from your physical cards — I feel like the risk in allowing easier contactless payments on Wear OS would be pretty minimal. Still, I’d be perfectly happy to see what I’m proposing here as an option while the status quo stays the default. Heck, Google could even throw in a strongly worded warning when you change the setting.

As it stands, though, using Google Wallet on your watch takes two hands, which runs counter to the purpose of a feature that should be all about convenience. You can fish a phone out of your pocket, unlock it, and tap it to a card reader all without setting down your coffee (or your shopping bags, or your child, et cetera) — but one-handed payments aren’t possible on Wear OS. It’s a niche complaint, but I’d love to see it addressed, even if recent changes abroad make it seem like Google is increasingly prioritizing security over flexibility when it comes to payments.

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