Wear OS could make Google Wallet transactions a little trickier

Summary

• The Google Wallet app on Wear OS could soon request the user’s PIN for tap-to-pay transactions.
• This comes days after Google confirmed it was requiring Wallet users on smartphones to re-verify their credentials every few minutes.
• Given the existing safeguards inside Wear OS, this feature would only make things a little inconvenient for frequent users.

The Google Wallet app has undergone a few changes over the last several weeks. Last month, the app added an extra layer of verification for transit payments. Not much later, Google began asking Wallet users on Android phones to re-verify their identity after three minutes, regardless of whether the phone was in use or not. It now looks like this phenomenon could also spread to Wear OS devices, at least based on multiple user reports on Reddit.

According to a Reddit user (via 9to5Google), their Wear OS smartwatch is now requesting a PIN while initiating a tap-to-pay transaction. For security reasons, Wear OS smartwatches like the Pixel Watch series require a PIN to set up Google Wallet. Moreover, it also requests a PIN each time the user takes the smartwatch off. So with these safeguards already in place, making users manually enter the PIN on the wearable’s tiny screen seems like an additional step that nobody asked for.

The person who first revealed this change said they’re based in Asia, whereas a couple of other users claim that this is a relatively new behavior for Google Wallet on Wear OS. Google recently confirmed that smartphone users will need to re-verify their credentials after a few minutes, which, as 9to5Google found out, was around three minutes. So it’s possible that the Wallet team has introduced a similar restriction for Wear OS smartwatches.

Could this be a bug?

9to5Google points out that the Google Wallet support page makes no mention of smartwatches, indicating that this new authentication process may not be intentional. Let’s also not forget that Wear OS requires users to open the Wallet app either through a watch face complication or by double-tapping the digital crown, among other methods, to initiate a tap-to-pay transaction.

The aforementioned three-minute timer between verification requests on Android phones made a great deal of sense. But bringing this to smartwatches would add an unnecessary step, defeating the entire purpose of having a tap-to-pay device on your wrist. In fact, paying with a credit or debit card in your wallet could be much faster in many scenarios.