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Google Wallet may lift syncing restrictions for certain types of passes

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Joe Maring / Android Authority

TL;DR Google Wallet’s “private passes” — government IDs, health insurance cards, et cetera — don’t currently sync between devices.

Code found in Google Play services indicates that may be changing.

It’s unclear when private pass syncing may be released.

Google Wallet supports a document type Google calls generic private passes. As opposed to other pass types — store loyalty cards or concert tickets, for example — private passes come with extra security features meant to help keep critical information attached to documents like government IDs or health insurance cards private. One of those security features is that private passes can only exist on a single device at one time, but it looks like that could be changing.

Experimenting with the latest version of Google Play services, we spotted code that indicates Google Wallet might soon incorporate features that will allow users to transfer private passes between devices, or even sync them between multiple concurrent devices.

A few flags found in code for version 25.45.33 of Google Play services point to this in-progress private pass sharing functionality:

Code Copy Text PrivatePassSync__enable_generic_private_pass_sync

Code Copy Text PrivatePassSync__enable_pass_migration

Code Copy Text PrivatePassSync__enabled

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