Key Facts

• Rahul Naskar used Google Wallet for transit in his region and abroad, finding that the experience varied significantly, with Google Wallet not working the same across all parts of the world.
• In India, Rahul buys transport passes for metro train services using Google Wallet and stores them for quick entry or exit through the Automatic Fare Collection gate, which makes the detection process faster and error-free.
• Google Wallet supports only a limited number of transit cards in the US and Canada, and users can add money to the transit card using Google Wallet and then use it like a credit card to make payments on POS terminals via NFC.
• When a physical transit card is transferred to Google Wallet, it gets deactivated and will no longer work, meaning that only one device can have the transit card saved at a time, and users cannot have the same card on multiple devices running Google Wallet.
• Google Wallet does not guarantee that the transit card will continue working after the phone's battery dies, unlike Apple Wallet's Express Transit with Power Reserve, which allows for up to five hours of continued use after the iPhone's battery dies.