Why I ditched PDFs and started using Google Wallet for almost everything

When you think about Google Wallet, you probably picture payment methods, transit passes, IDs, and loyalty cards.

For me, though, one of the most important use cases over the last year or so has been PDF documents. PDF?! Yes, PDF.

I know documents are not something you would normally associate with a payment application.

However, Google Wallet's ability to scan and store custom passes has made it my go-to solution for handling the most common type of PDF document I use in my daily life.

Google Wallet can scan many of my PDFs

And make them easier to parse

It's been more than a year since Google added the Everything else option when creating a new card in Wallet.

Thanks to it, I can take a photo of (almost) anything, then let Google parse it.

When it first rolled out, I tried it on local French loyalty cards that weren't officially supported by Wallet. Then I decided to point it at other types of documents to see if it could handle them.

Concert, theater, stand-up comedy, expo, museum, and other kinds of tickets used to live as random PDF files in my Google Drive.

Wallet promised to convert those to passes even if the ticket issuer doesn't offer a native "Add to Wallet" option.

So I tried it, and I was amazed to see how well it worked. The steps are very straightforward, too:

1. Open Google Wallet.
2. Tap the + button to add a new pass.
3. Choose Everything else.
4. Use the camera to scan any PDF ticket.

Wallet does the heavy lifting for you. It finds the event name, date, time, venue and location, and the ticket holder's name.

It also parses the exact section, row, and seat, and adds them to the right text fields. It also creates a QR code.

What surprised me most about this is that it handles foreign languages just as well as English.

I've let Google Wallet manage my trips for the last year, giving it tickets in Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish, French, Albanian, and Dutch, to name a few. It always extracted the right address, section, and seat.

Instead of opening a bunch of PDF reservations in different formats and languages and wasting time scanning them with my eyes or translating them to find the info I'm looking for, Wallet displays everything in English, in a uniform look, and with only the info I need. It's perfect.

Wallet tickets are superior to PDF documents

Especially at underground venues

Besides offering a central place to store all reservations and parsing the right information out of any ticket format, Google Wallet brings a couple of extra benefits that make it superior to just storing PDFs in your inbox, on your phone, or inside a Google Drive folder.

The major perk is that Google Wallet passes are available offline by default.

I don't have to think or prepare beforehand, making a document available offline, downloading it, or taking a screenshot to ensure I can get into a venue like the many underground Parisian theaters or bars I go to.

This comes in handy when I've waited an hour in a queue, got to the door, and suddenly realized I had no signal and couldn't open the ticket attached to my reservation email.

I've walked back outside to get a signal a few too many times, but never again.

Wallet keeps my passes ready at all times, so even if I'm completely offline, I can pull up the QR code, as well as the original scanned document, to get in.

Better yet, these passes show up on the Google Wallet app on my Google Pixel Watch 4. I don't need to take my phone out of my pocket to get into an event. The QR code, as well as all the location and seat details, are there on my wrist.

I recommend using Wallet for all your tickets, but...

I've been using Google Wallet for all my reservations for a while now, and I recommend you do too. It works extremely well and is very reliable. Google has also ensured many extra features are there, should you need them.

For example, you can attach an existing image or share a screenshot or photo from any app to Wallet without having to scan or snap a new photo.

Editing a pass is possible, too, both before and after it's been added, to make sure you have all the right info and all the essential fields.

However, I've barely had to do that because Wallet does such a good job from the start.

Either way, the app stores the original document, too, so you can always check it if something doesn't seem to line up.

There are a few limitations to this process, though.

For one, multiple tickets in a single PDF must be added one by one.

Even though Wallet lets me attach multiple images, it's never managed to parse two different tickets in one reservation.

So, whenever I have a booking for two tickets, I have to create two passes. That's inconvenient and frustrating.

My second gripe with it is that the information doesn't seem to appear anywhere outside of Google Wallet just yet, even though there's a setting to allow it to.

I wish a new ticket created a Calendar event with the right address saved in Maps. Right now, even the address on a Wallet pass isn't clickable — I have to manually copy it and paste it into Google Maps.

Google Wallet is great for PDFs, but it has a ways to go

There are so many opportunities here for Google to streamline the process further and tie everything together.

Nothing is stopping the company from automatically creating a custom pass each time you receive a ticket or reservation by mail, regardless of whether the vendor supports Wallet or not, and associating it with the Calendar event it generates.

Then, on the day of the event, it could surface all the details in a notification. That would save me so much time, but I can only hope Google implements this soon.

Google Wallet

Google LLC

FINANCE

Price: Free

4.4

Download