I uninstalled my old Google Wallet app (which now apparently serves the single purpose of sending and receiving money), and downloaded Android Pay to set it up.
The main reason I used Google Wallet was to keep track of my loyalty cards (and other cards with a barcode), not so much to use it as a credit card replacement. Most of the stores I go to don’t even have the features installed to use NFC for payment anyway.
The first thing I noticed about Android Pay was how unintuitive the controls were. You would expect things to only respond when you want them to, but if you tap any card once, your entire card set expands, rather than just that one card popping up. If you scroll too far up, everything collapses again.
But that’s not my primary complaint. The main problem I’m having is that you can now only add loyalty cards for companies registered in Android Pay’s database.
Back when I used the old Google Wallet, I was able to put in my library cards as loyalty programs because it would let you assign a custom name for all your cards, and it didn’t have to match it with any database.
Now, although my library cards carried over to Android Pay, I’m not able to add any new cards with barcodes (such as my student ID). When I type in “Northwestern University” (because that’s what I want to save my barcode as), it just says there are no results found, and won’t even let me put in a custom card.
I searched around for a solution, and it seems like that’s just not a feature that’s available anymore.
Sure, Android Pay wasn’t exactly designed to be a loyalty card holder, but it, in theory, is supposed to be a wallet replacement (or, at the very least, a wallet shrinker, because you can’t store your driver’s license in Android Pay). If a secondary feature like this is implemented, I would hope that it has full functionality (or at least not take a step backwards from a previous version of the app).
Android Pay no longer accepts all custom loyalty programs
I got an email from Google about a week or so ago letting me know that Google Wallet was now Android Pay.
In response to the notice, as well as from all the hype going around about using your phone as a payment method, I decided to give Android Pay a try.
I uninstalled my old Google Wallet app (which now apparently serves the single purpose of sending and receiving money), and downloaded Android Pay to set it up.
The main reason I used Google Wallet was to keep track of my loyalty cards (and other cards with a barcode), not so much to use it as a credit card replacement. Most of the stores I go to don’t even have the features installed to use NFC for payment anyway.
The first thing I noticed about Android Pay was how unintuitive the controls were. You would expect things to only respond when you want them to, but if you tap any card once, your entire card set expands, rather than just that one card popping up. If you scroll too far up, everything collapses again.
But that’s not my primary complaint. The main problem I’m having is that you can now only add loyalty cards for companies registered in Android Pay’s database.
Back when I used the old Google Wallet, I was able to put in my library cards as loyalty programs because it would let you assign a custom name for all your cards, and it didn’t have to match it with any database.
Now, although my library cards carried over to Android Pay, I’m not able to add any new cards with barcodes (such as my student ID). When I type in “Northwestern University” (because that’s what I want to save my barcode as), it just says there are no results found, and won’t even let me put in a custom card.
I searched around for a solution, and it seems like that’s just not a feature that’s available anymore.
Sure, Android Pay wasn’t exactly designed to be a loyalty card holder, but it, in theory, is supposed to be a wallet replacement (or, at the very least, a wallet shrinker, because you can’t store your driver’s license in Android Pay). If a secondary feature like this is implemented, I would hope that it has full functionality (or at least not take a step backwards from a previous version of the app).
I uninstalled my old Google Wallet app (which now apparently serves the single purpose of sending and receiving money), and downloaded Android Pay to set it up.
The main reason I used Google Wallet was to keep track of my loyalty cards (and other cards with a barcode), not so much to use it as a credit card replacement. Most of the stores I go to don’t even have the features installed to use NFC for payment anyway.
The first thing I noticed about Android Pay was how unintuitive the controls were. You would expect things to only respond when you want them to, but if you tap any card once, your entire card set expands, rather than just that one card popping up. If you scroll too far up, everything collapses again.
But that’s not my primary complaint. The main problem I’m having is that you can now only add loyalty cards for companies registered in Android Pay’s database.
Back when I used the old Google Wallet, I was able to put in my library cards as loyalty programs because it would let you assign a custom name for all your cards, and it didn’t have to match it with any database.
Now, although my library cards carried over to Android Pay, I’m not able to add any new cards with barcodes (such as my student ID). When I type in “Northwestern University” (because that’s what I want to save my barcode as), it just says there are no results found, and won’t even let me put in a custom card.
I searched around for a solution, and it seems like that’s just not a feature that’s available anymore.
Sure, Android Pay wasn’t exactly designed to be a loyalty card holder, but it, in theory, is supposed to be a wallet replacement (or, at the very least, a wallet shrinker, because you can’t store your driver’s license in Android Pay). If a secondary feature like this is implemented, I would hope that it has full functionality (or at least not take a step backwards from a previous version of the app).