PayPal announces support for passkeys on Apple devices, launching first for US customers

Apple and other tech companies are pushing for passkeys to replace traditional passwords for enhanced security, and PayPal confirmed on Monday it is embracing the technology as well. The fintech giant announced it would support the feature first on Apple devices in the United States.

PayPal said users logging in through its website via iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices can start enabling passkeys for their accounts this week. The company also confirmed other platforms that will adopt passkeys would receive the same support at a later time.

“A founding member of the FIDO Alliance, PayPal is one of the first financial services companies to make passkeys widely available to its users,” the company said. “This cutting-edge security standard is significant as passkeys address one of the biggest security problems on the web, which is the weakness of password authentication.”

PayPal customers in the US will start seeing the passkey option starting Monday. But the feature will not be available to users in other regions until “early 2023.”

Passkey is one of the new features Apple introduced on iOS 16, and is also planned to roll out on its other products. But the technology was, technically, developed through the FIDO Alliance, so it is also going to be supported on devices and products from Google and Microsoft. More platforms will likely support passkeys as it becomes more widely used.

The purpose of passkeys is mainly to eliminate passwords, which have become a less secure way to log in to accounts in recent years. PayPal pointed out, citing a 2018 Verizon data breach report, that 2.6 billion passwords had been hacked in 2017, with attackers using common password-stealing and guessing methods 81% of the time. And people’s tendency to reuse passwords for multiple accounts for the sake of easily remembering their login credentials exacerbates the security risks.

With passkeys, though, users will no longer need to log in with usernames and passwords, as they are replaced by cryptographic keys. For Apple devices, passkeys will be stored on iCloud Keychain, and users can then authenticate their login attempts through biometric-based security features. Passkeys will roll out on iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura devices.

To set up PayPal passkeys on Apple devices, users will have to log in on PayPal.com with their existing credentials on supported Apple devices. A prompt to “Create a passkey” will then appear so that users can enable the feature for their PayPal accounts.

Once users choose to continue using a passkey, they will be asked to authenticate the change with Touch ID or Face ID. The next time they attempt to open their account, they no longer have to enter their email address and password.

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