PayPal is expanding its Passkeys to Canada, allowing eligible customers using Apple and Android devices north of the border to access them for safe, quick, and secure login to their accounts.
With a passkey, you can securely log into a PayPal account without having to enter a password. Instead, your identity is verified using biometrics or a device password (versus the saved keychain password on an Apple device, which has already been available). Passkeys have already been available in the U.S. for both Apple and Android devices, and now have made their way to Canada.
Passkeys are a new industry standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium, designed to replace passwords with cryptographic key pairs and using digital credentials, such as biometric sensors, including fingerprint, facial recognition, and PIN or pattern.
A founding member of the FIDO Alliance, PayPal is one of the first financial services companies to begin making passkey authentication available to its users. Passkeys are known to be highly resistant to phishing, credential stuffing, and other remote attacks. The security standard addresses some of the biggest security problems on the web caused by the weakness of password authentication, says PayPal.
Creating and using a passkey with PayPal is a quick and easy process on an Apple device. Once created, passkeys are synced with iCloud Keychain, ensuring a strong, private relationship between a customer and your device, and an easy sign-in experience for PayPal users with devices running iOS 16, iPadOS 16.1, macOS Ventura or later.
Once eligible customers log in to PayPal.com using Safari and existing PayPal credentials such as a username and password, you will have the option to “Create a passkey.” You’ll then be prompted to authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID. Then, the passkey will be automatically created.
For Android devices running Android 9+ and using the Chrome browser, log in to PayPal using your existing credentials such as a username and password. The option to “create a passkey” may appear with information about passkeys. You will be prompted to authenticate the same way you typically unlock your device which will automatically create the passkey. Once created, you will be directed to the PayPal home screen. At the next login, you can begin using the passkey on Android 9+ devices.
Once a passkey is created, PayPal customers will be able to login with passkey as their automatic primary login method wherever available.
Passkeys will be rolling out in Canada over the coming weeks.