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PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ:PYPL) has started adding passkeys as a way for users to log in to their accounts without a password, an advance that intended to increase security while boosting sales at merchants who accept PayPal, it said Monday.
According to a recent survey of U.S. consumers, 44% have abandoned an online purchase because they forgot their password, the company said.
Passkeys were created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium as a standard to replace passwords with cryptographic key pairs, PayPal (PYPL) said. The technology is resistant to phishing and is designed so that there is no shared passkey data between platforms.
The new PayPal (PYPL) log in option will be available to iPhone, iPad, or Mac users on PayPal.com and will expand to additional platforms as they add support for passkeys.
The development of a secure method to log in without a password is important because more than 2.6B records were hacked in 2017 and of these hacks, 81% are estimated to have been caused by password stealing and guessing, the company said.
PayPal (PYPL) passkeys will start rolling out on Monday to customers in the U.S. PayPal passkeys will become available in additional countries early in 2023.
In June, Apple (AAPL) introduced its newest version of macOS, which includes passkey in its Safari browser.
