Google Wallet iOS app now supports Touch ID and lets you split the bill between friends
Apple Pay may be leaving Google Wallet in the dust when it comes to adoption, but Google hasn't given up yet. It's just updated its iOS app to support Touch ID, add optimization for the iPhone 6/Plus …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-race: per the coverage, Apple Pay is outpacing Google Wallet on adoption, yet Google keeps shipping for its rival's platform rather than conceding iOS. The Touch ID work matters because it lets Wallet authenticate with the same fingerprint sensor Apple built for Apple Pay on the iPhones it targets, removing one of the practical reasons to default to Apple's wallet.
The bill-splitting feature is the more telling signal — it pushes Wallet toward person-to-person money movement, a direction Google made official months later when it announced Android Pay at I/O and committed to relaunching Wallet as a P2P payments app. The subsequent iOS updates focused on sending money between users confirm that pivot stuck.
First-order effects
- iPhone 6/Plus owners can now unlock and authorize Google Wallet with Touch ID instead of a passcode, closing the authentication gap with Apple Pay on the same devices.
- Friends using the iOS app can divide shared expenses directly in Wallet, giving the app a concrete social-payments hook beyond storing cards.
Second-order effects
- Competing head-on with Apple Pay at the NFC terminal looks unwinnable, so Google redirects effort toward P2P — a lane where Apple had no equivalent product in this coverage window.
- Every feature Google ships on iOS doubles as a retention play: users who split bills and move money through Wallet have a reason to keep it installed even when Apple Pay handles their in-store taps.
Third-order effects
- If wallets differentiate on social money movement rather than tap-to-pay alone, they evolve into persistent financial identities — the 'wallet as permission layer' pattern — rather than interchangeable card containers.
- Cross-platform wallet strategy becomes structural for Google: maintaining an iOS presence regardless of which native payments stack wins each platform.
The trend: Mobile wallets are splitting into two battlegrounds — hardware-locked tap-to-pay dominated by the platform owner, and cross-platform P2P payments where third-party wallets like Google Wallet can still compete.