9to5Mac calls Apple Wallet one of Apple’s most underrated services, which is generous. It’s not underrated—it’s under-marketed. Apple spent years cramming genuinely useful features into Wallet, then did almost nothing to tell anyone they exist.
Most iPhone owners still think Wallet means tapping your phone at Starbucks. They don’t know it can store transit cards in a dozen cities, replace hotel room keys at Hyatt or Hilton, hold driver’s licenses in nine states, or let you share car keys with family. Apple added all this stuff quietly, buried in iOS release notes, as if people would just stumble across the ability to unlock their front door with their wrist.
The feature gap isn’t technical—it’s adoption. Apple Pay works at millions of terminals because Visa and Mastercard did the work. But digital IDs? Only Arizona, Maryland, Colorado, and a handful of other states. Home keys via Wallet? Only if you bought the right smart lock and figured out how to pair it. Transit cards work great in New York, London, and Tokyo, less so in smaller cities where legacy fare systems haven’t caught up. Apple built the pipes, but they can’t force municipalities and hotels to plug in.
The irony is that Wallet should be Apple’s killer everyday utility, the one that makes switching to Android unthinkable. If your driver’s license, office badge, and apartment key live in Wallet, you’re not casually trying a Pixel. But Apple’s treated it like plumbing instead of a product—functional, invisible, and assumed. Meanwhile Google is out here loudly hyping Google Wallet integration with every airline kiosk and college campus ID system they can sign.
Wallet works brilliantly if you’re in the right city with the right lock and the right hotel chain, which is exactly the kind of conditional success Apple usually refuses to ship.
Reporting reference: 9to5Mac ↗