Although everyone here at Android Police is passionate about Google's goodies, it is no secret how we feel about Wear OS — fundamentally flawed, embarrassing, and persistently lagging behind the competition. Not surprisingly, Wear OS makes up less than 12% of smartwatch sales in the US. One of the most glaring misses by Google is the distressingly low number of countries that support Google Pay on Wear OS watches — compared to Samsung's 24 and Apple's 57, Google Pay is only accepted in 11 countries. Thanks to an app called Permanent Proxy by XDA forum member Jolan Rensen, however, you can now activate and use Google Pay in an unlisted country.

Using Permanent Proxy to fool your Wear OS smartwatch into thinking it's located in a Google Pay-supported country is like how some users use a VPN service to overcome regional restrictions placed by services like Netflix.

To use Google Pay on Wear OS in an unlisted country, you'll need the following:

A Wear OS smartwatch.

The Permanent Proxy app downloaded from either XDA Labs or Google Play Store.

app downloaded from either XDA Labs or Google Play Store. A proxy service, preferably one that offers a static IP address.

Here are the steps to take:

On your Wear OS smartwatch, go to Settings > System > About. Scroll down until you see Build number and tap on it 7 times. Next go into Developer options from Settings and toggle on both ADB debugging and Debug over Bluetooth. Open Permanent Proxy from your watch and tap on the Always allow this computer option. Input the proxy address and port number of your choice. Toggle on the Enable on boot option if you don't want to enter the values after each reboot of the watch.

The latest version of Permanent Proxy is 3.2 and it was published on October 17th. Two users from the Permanent Proxy XDA thread have already reported successfully activating Google Pay from their unlisted countries.

Although this is certainly a nice solution to activate Google Pay on Wear OS in places you couldn't before, it would be infinitely better for Google to diligently expand support.