Google Wallet users are apparently getting to test a straightforward, but potentially quite handy addition: you can now favorite your passes, making them more readily available when you’re in need.
Hints within the latest Google Play Services beta suggest a star-centered shortcut that gives top billing to important items such as boarding passes, transit cards, and event tickets for quick retrieval.
What the new code suggests about Wallet favorites
Strings found in Google Play Services 25.37.31 beta mention a new “favorite” control for a pass (alongside an education tip that informs users they can add a starred pass to their home screen). There is a new database structure added on the back-end, indicating that Wallet will be keeping its own state for favorited items instead of treating them like regular entries.
What is still unclear is where favorites will appear. The feature could take the form of pinning starred passes to the top of Wallet’s main carousel, or it may generate Android launcher shortcuts so the pass is one tap away from the phone’s home screen. Both ways would alleviate the hassle of fumbling through a long list at crunch time.
How a favorites system might function in Wallet
The most direct method is in-app pinning: You tap a star, and that pass now lives at the front of Wallet — added atop loyalty cards or archived tickets. Much like existing organization controls (sorted by issuer, grouped, archived) but with an obvious priority level for things you regularly use or need soon.
The most ambitious is integrating with the launcher. Pinned shortcuts and widgets are supported in Android, so a favorite might be able to produce a direct shortcut to an actual pass. For travelers and commuters, that means just tapping out a boarding pass or bus ticket on the home screen and getting onboard without extra taps and load times. It would also be a good fit for Android’s Quick Access Wallet feature on the lock screen, which already shows payment cards and any passes that are relevant to time or location.
Why it matters for heavy Google Wallet users
Wallet has become a catch-all for payments, transportation, events, IDs, and loyalty programs. As that girth increases, so does the mental load of finding the right product at precisely the right time. A favorites layer would help add order to increasingly crowded libraries of passes, particularly for power users juggling multiple airline, stadium, and transit passes.
Think about frequent flyers who pick up more than one mobile boarding pass during a multi-leg trip, or city commuters with multiple transit cards among regions. A workflow based on star-and-pin might pin today’s gate pass or the metro card in play at the top — cutting down on the “scroll and hunt” you currently do when at a turnstile or boarding queue.
Analysts have observed how mainstream mobile wallets are for payments as well as ticketing, with market researchers such as Juniper Research pointing to continued global growth. The more one stores in a wallet, the more valuable is fast retrieval. Little interface decisions can have a disproportionate effect on perceived speed and reliability.
How it stacks up against the competition
Competing platforms have approached rapid access in various other ways. Express Transit for Apple ensures certain transit cards can be used without any authentication, and it’s simple to move passes around in priority order. That Wallet experience is available on select compatible devices. A Google Wallet favorites function would be a logical parity play — especially if the home screen pins are in fact part of the game plan and playing to Android’s flexible launcher and shortcut model.
Caveats and what to watch next as testing expands
Empirically observed features don’t always make it, and those that do can arrive in increments or via server-side toggles. The language that has been unearthed in Play Services indicates that Google is working on both the user education and the data plumbing behind this, which implies that a public launch of some kind must be in the works.
If favorites do emerge, expect them to be deeply integrated with lock screen Wallet access, context-aware recommendations for upcoming trips or events, and maybe a way to manage your favorites across all of your devices. For now, the takeaway is straightforward: Google’s making it easier to find faster access to your most important passes — and that’s precisely the sort of polish that makes a hectic travel day or stadium arrival even just a little bit better.