Passkeys will help you break free from the shambles of passwords by making them a thing of the past. Despite backing from the FiDO Alliance, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, passkeys adoption has been on the slower side. While almost all major password managers have added passwordless login support, less than 50 online services have taken the necessary steps toward our password-free future. PayPal was quick to adopt passkeys, but support was limited to Apple devices. That’s changing now, as the payment platform is rolling out passkeys support for Android 9+ devices in the US, and it will be “more widely available over the coming year.”
The catch here is that PayPal is only adding passkeys support to its mobile website when accessed through Chrome on Android 9.0+ devices. Its Android app is not gaining passwordless login support yet, which is a bummer. Plus, support is limited to personal PayPal accounts for now.
Additionally, this is a phased rollout, and you can only create passkeys for your PayPal account if the prompt appears while accessing the service through your phone’s browser. You’ll have to authenticate yourself using your phone’s unlock PIN or fingerprint scanner during the process.
Passkeys are more secure than regular passwords and help keep your PayPal account safe from phishing attempts and hacking threats. Given the benefits involved, you should enable passkey login on your PayPal account as soon as the option shows up.
Google added passkeys integration to its browser with the release of Chrome 108 in December 2022. So once you set up passwordless sign-in for your PayPal account, it will automatically sync across all your other linked and supported devices. After you have set up passkeys for your PayPal account, you can log into the payment platform on any supported platform using biometric authentication, all without entering your password.
With the addition of Android, PayPal is the only payment platform to support passkey login across all major platforms. Windows support is missing for now, despite the latest OS release supporting the FiDO standard.
