Amazon Adds Passkey Support on the Web and iPhone
- Paul Thurrott
- Oct 23, 2023
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Amazon announced today that it has rolled out support for passkeys, enabling passwordless customer sign-ins on the web and iPhone, with Android coming soon.
“Customers can now set up passkeys in their Amazon settings, allowing them to easily use the same face, fingerprint, or PIN used to unlock their device,” a new post to About Amazon explains. “Passkey support is available today for all Amazon customers using browsers and is gradually rolling out on the iOS Amazon Shopping app with support coming soon on the Android Amazon Shopping app.”
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As Amazon explains, passkeys are a new, secure way to sign into online accounts without needing to remember or enter a complex password. They piggyback on the secure device authentication methods on your devices—like Windows Hello on PCs or Face ID on iPhones—and passthrough a stored authentication for the underlying service. So once you’ve set up a passkey for Amazon, say, on your iPhone, you will never need to enter your password again, no matter how you access the service (via the web, a mobile app, or whatever). You just need to authenticate with whatever method that device provides.
Passkeys are also more convenient than traditional 2FA (two- or multi-factor authentication) methods because it can all be done on the one device. That is, if you’re signing in on a PC, everything you need is on the PC, you don’t need to approve a prompt on your phone. (And you can use both together; if you need to use 2FA in the future, you still can.)
“This is about giving customers ease-of-use and security simultaneously in their Amazon experience,” said Dave Treadwell, senior vice president of ecommerce at Amazon and a former Microsoft executive. “While passwords will still be around in the foreseeable future, this is an exciting step in the right direction. We are thrilled to be an early adopter of this new authentication method, helping to realize our vision for a more secure, passwordless internet.”
Enrolling your PCs and other devices for Amazon’s passkey support is easy, too. You can learn more in Hands-On: Amazon.com Passkeys.