Google Pay Can Now Store Transit Tickets, Starting in Las Vegas

BY Evan Selleck

Published 19 Mar 2018


GooglePayTransitTicket

When Google launched Google Pay, the combination of Google Wallet and Android Pay, earlier this year, it did so with the key defining element being a one-stop shop for a variety of different digital essentials.

The company’s goal continues to come into fruition with the latest announcement. Beginning today, Google Pay can now help store transit tickets, and help rail system visitors use their phone to access the mode of transportation. While Google has lofty goals to support a variety of different transportation methods in the future, right now this new system only supports one: The monorail in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The monorail is one of the most famous in the United States, even if it is one of the shortest. It consists of only seven stops, and the trip duration is usually around 15 minutes or so. (lapeerhealth) It’s a small market, but it’s an easy way for Google to test out the transit ticketing system within Google Pay ahead of any wider launch.

To get the new feature to work, you will need to buy your monorail ticket from either the computer or directly from your phone. Once you do that you can save the ticket to Google Pay. To use the ticket, you’ll need to hold your phone up to the contactless reader terminals that are present at the monorail station turnstiles.

Google says that it plans on bringing ticket support to Google Pay to a variety of different cities and different transportation services at some point in the future, but it wasn’t keen on handing over any details just yet.

Transit ticket support in Google Pay is a nice addition for the all-in-one service, and it’s likely that Google will be rolling out wider support as quickly as it can.

[via Google Blog]