Mobile wallets can be a great software solution and alternative to having to constantly wield a pocket full of documents. The likes of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay initially offered a unique way to utilize your smartphone to replace physical copies of your debit/credit cards and make payments via NFC.
However, as it usually goes with technology, new needs add to innovation. Google Pay and Apple Pay have slowly been expanding their respective mobile wallet apps to also support public transit and gift cards.
Now you can even store away your flight information into Google Pay. Yep, your boarding pass for that next flight out of town can be saved on your phone for quick access or need to open another app. Get in line to board and Google Pay can have your boarding information and QR code readily available.
How to add a boarding pass to Google Pay?
There are a couple of different ways to add a boarding pass to Google Pay. First, we’ll cover how to allow Pay access to emails to try to add it automatically. We’ll show you how to add it manually to make sure you always get it right there where you need it.
Automatic
Let’s start with the option to give Google Pay a chance to search through our emails:
- Open the app tray and open Google Pay
- Tap the hamburger menu in the top-left corner
- Then the Settings option
- Find and select General
- Toggle Gmail Imports to On
- Connect to Gmail and choose your account
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That’s all you need on this setting to get Google Pay to automatically import boarding passes into your wallet from Gmail. Unfortunately, airlines are slow to adopt, and only a few options have implemented this feature thus far. That brings us to the more safe and assured option of using a screenshot.
Manually
With this, you will take the boarding pass image provided by either email or SMS to magically import it into Google Pay manually:
- Open image of the boarding pass
- Use the volume up and power key combination to take a screenshot
- Expand the notification from the screenshot
- Select Add to Google Pay in the notification
- Click Save to Google Pay on the next screen
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Role call ready
Now you should be able to access your boarding pass from the Passes toolbar option in Google Pay or the new Power Button Menu on Pixel phones.
It should be noted that this tutorial is a step-by-step for Google’s build of Android on Pixels. Other phones may not have the same success with these steps, but “stock” manufacturers like OnePlus, Moto, and Nokia should be relatively similar.