Google Wallet is about to make airport chaos way less stressful

It’s Memorial Day weekend and officially the start of summer travel season, and with that, Google announced some travel-friendly changes that are coming to Google Wallet.

Just a month ago, it added Live Updates for flight tracking that stayed present on lockscreens or always-on displays. In a developer session at Google I/O 2026, it revealed plans to make

Gokmen Goksel, tech lead for Google Wallet, said, “We want to make travel feel less stressful and less disconnected and be with travelers throughout their journey.”

Toward that end, it’s adding the ability to join airline frequent flyer programs right from a boarding pass in Google Wallet. This bypasses your having to search out an airline’s application on your own and presents it when you’re most interested in signing up.

Goksel also said that Google has updates for Auto Linked Passes that will make things smoother for travelers where they’re most frazzled, in airports. It can put related passes in a user’s Wallet automatically.

Right now, Brazil’s Azul Airlines is using it to push boarding passes to customers’ Google Wallets after they check in on mobile, web, or at the airport.

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Auto Linked Passes also allows for sending customers baggage tags and alerting them to offers linked to their boarding passes or loyalty cards.

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