Google Wallet

2025-01-01

We went on a family vacation to Sydney recently and my Google Wallet just quit on me.. I wanted to rant a bit and document how to fix it for anyone else that might be in a similar situation.

What led to it

I have been using my google wallet for random everyday purchases like everyone else. I have a few cards setup, transit passes etc etc. It's been working fine. Sometime in the past few months, there was a feature update to Android and I noticed some additional settings in the wallet. On my device, these are under "Security & Privacy" -> "Device Unlock" -> "Theft Protection". Specifically, I enabled "Theft Detection Lock" and "Offline Device Lock". These are sensible settings to enable as more and more of our financial life and sensitive information is on our mobile device.

What I didn't realize is how these things work. Our flight to Sydney was roughly 15 hours and like an obedient passenger, I put my phone in flight mode for the duration of my flight. I also didn't pay for inflight wifi, so my device was just sitting in my pocket the entire flight while I binge watched some random movies and old tv shows.

I land in Sydney and when I looked at my phone it said - "device was offline, theft protection enabled" or some such innocuous message. I was like, "oh cool, this does work". I proceeded to unlock my device, got on airport wifi and went on with my life. We clear immigration and badly needed some food/coffee, and I open my google wallet so I could get the right (travel) cards as the default. This is where I noticed that none of my payment cards (debit or credit) were there. Google wallet simply made them unavailable and it wouldn't let me add any new cards either.

What I tried

Apparently this kind of stuff sometimes happens with people that switch sim cards in international locations etc. I did try to switch to a new sim in Australia and I thought this was why it happened. I tried a few suggested solutions, like going back to my old sim, restarting my phone, etc etc. Nothing worked, and I was in Australia with no credit cards in my Google Wallet. Luckily, I brought my physical cards with me and I was fine for the trip, but this was a little jarring. Being in a foreign country with no payments options in what was to be my primary payment method threw me off. I spent the usual amount of time googling, following random blog posts - nothing worked. Posts like this Google Support post show up, which are no help. Wallet won't let you add cards either, in this state.

What worked

I get back to the US and my wallet is still not showing my cards and it won't let add new ones. I am home, and increasingly desperate, so I completely uninstall and reinstall wallet - that doesn't help either. I see these payment options when I go to the web version of my wallet, so I suspect that this is stricly something to do with my device. I finally suspect that this might have something to do with Theft protection - so I went through my security settings, completely disabled all the "Theft Protection" settings, restart my phone and voila - my wallet is back with all my cards. I then re-enabled the "Theft protection" settings and I still have all my cards.

Do better, Google

It would be nice if google automatically reenabled all my cards once it detects a proper device unlock (like on the first attempt or something like that). It could get a little fancier and could ask you to reenter the account password or some such additional security measure in cases like this. In anycase, mystery solved and I hope this helps someone dealing with similar issues.