Up until now, Google Wallet was capable of running on devices with Android 7.0 or newer versions of the operating system. It meant that you could use the company’s digital wallet on Samsung’s smartphones and tablets as old as the ones that came out in 2014, such as the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy Tab E 9.6. Well, that has changed as the American tech giant now updated the app’s minimum requirements.
Google now says that Google Wallet can run only on devices with Android 9.0 or newer versions of the OS (via 9To5Google). According to the brand, “to keep Wallet features more secure,” it “must be able to send security updates to your device,” and at the moment, “security updates aren’t available for Android versions below 9.0.” Therefore, it had to make the latest change to the app’s minimum requirements.
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That means Samsung’s older smartphones and tablets, especially the ones that came out before 2014/2015, will not be able to run Google’s digital wallet service. While that’s a bummer, we think very few people might be using devices that old. As such, the latest change should affect only a small number of users.
Google is also bumping up the minimum requirements for the Google Wallet app for Wear OS. Now, it can run only on Wear OS 2.x or newer versions of the operating system. Fortunately, all Samsung Galaxy Watch models with Wear OS run Wear OS 4. So, no wearables from the brand will be affected by this change.
