Google Wallet rolls out nicknames for passes

Following the Material 3 Expressive redesign, Google Wallet has rolled out pass nicknames and other features that developers can take advantage of.

The Google Wallet release notes for October 14, 2025 have one user-facing entry: “Users can now add their own nicknames to passes to make them easier to organize in the Google Wallet app and website.”

Google first mentioned this capability in the April 2025 Play Services Release Notes. This joins the existing nicknames for payment cards that appear in Chrome, YouTube, and the Play Store.

Select a pass and tap the three-dot overflow button in the top-right corner. You’ll find “Add a nickname,” with the text field supporting up to 25 characters.

On the homepage, it appears on the second line of your pass after a middle dot. It’s on the small side, but should help organization.

Google is also highlighting Nearby Passes notifications that were announced at I/O 2025: “Nearby Passes Geofence Notifications are now available for all regular pass types.” You get an alert from a loyalty card, event ticket, boarding passes, or offer when you’re near a specific location. If you’re near a cafe, the notification offers one-tap access to open their loyalty card.

There’s also:

• “Developers can now take advantage of Wallet’s email ingestion integration which enables your loyalty, boarding pass, and event ticket passes to be automatically added to users Wallet’s from their Gmail provided they have Gmail’s Smart features control on.” [Previously announced for loyalty cards, train, event, and movie tickets, and boarding passes.]
• “Multiple access cards (Campus ID, Corporate Badge, Hotel Key, Multi Family) with the same Application ID can now be provisioned to a single Google Wallet. When multiple cards share an AID, the card most recently selected in Google Wallet takes precedence for presentation to a reader. Users can easily select which card to present. Learn more.“
• “Merchants integrated with Smart Tap can now request to pilot our post-tap Loyalty Program Enrollment (aka Bounceback) experience. Users that tap to pay at a store are prompted to sign up for the merchant loyalty program.”