Google Wallet Adds A Whopping 36 New Banks And Credit Unions In The US
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Summary
- Google Wallet is adding tap-to-pay functionality for an increasing number of local banks and credit unions, recently surpassing a total of 5,000 supported smaller institutions.
- This month’s addition of 36 more local financial entities enhances the attractiveness of these typically lower-cost banking options by providing them with modern mobile payment features, helping to offset their common disadvantage of having fewer digital services.
- Alongside this expansion, Google Wallet is also focusing on bolstering its application security, such as exploring stricter authentication measures for app access, in response to its growing capability to store sensitive items like digital IDs for various US states.
Google Wallet has offered tap-to-pay for the big nationwide chains like Chase and Wells Fargo ever since the service was called Android Pay, but local banks and credit unions have taken a lot more time to support. Slowly but surely, Google continues to bring these smaller establishments into the fold.
Last Month’s New Additions
The reason for the slow going is the sheer number of local financial institutions across the US. By our count, Google Wallet now supports over 5,000 of these, with this month’s additions bringing the total across that milestone.
It’s a commendable effort, considering local banks and credit unions usually offer better rates and fees than the major players while being FDIC insured all the same. The drawbacks of banking with a smaller institution center around more limited technology and digital services, so when Google Wallet adds tap-to-pay support, there’s all the more reason to go local.
36 new banks and credit unions come to Google Wallet
We’ve been monitoring Google Wallet’s supported banks list for years now — but in the last month, Google added more banks than usual:
- Access Credit Union (IL)
- Artesia Credit Union
- Ashland Credit Union
- Austin Federal Credit Union (TX)
- Bank Of Orrick (MO)
- Bank Of Wisconsin Dells
- Cloaked
- Concho Valley Credit Union (TX)
- Cross Keys Bank
- F&M Bank (OK)
- Farmers and Merchants Bank (AL)
- Fidelity Bank of Texas (TX)
- First Kansas Bank (KS)
- First National Bank of Litchfield (IL)
- First Southern State Bank (AL)
- First State Bank of Uvalde (TX)
- Fort Mcclellan Credit Union
- Franklin Savings Bank (ME)
- Great North Bank (WI)
- KS StateBank (KS)
- Mayville State Bank (MI)
- Metrum Community Credit Union
- Money Federal Credit Union (NY)
- MoneyLion (NY)
- MUFG Bank Ltd. (NY)
- Northwestern Bank (WI)
- Oregon State Credit Union
- Rellevate
- Sawyer Savings Bank (NY)
- Shared Debit Business Card
- Southwest Research Center Federal Credit Union (TX)
- The Bank (US-KS)
- The Commercial Bank (SC)
- TruPartner Credit Union (OH)
- Union Bank (MI)
- Wakota Federal Credit Union (MN)
Beyond adding banks, the Google Wallet team has stayed pretty busy for the last month. The Android and Wear OS apps were spotted testing stronger security a few days ago, gearing up to require authentication to simply open the app — not just to access mobile payments. This makes sense, considering the app now supports digital IDs and other sensitive documents and added these for several more US states just this month.
