The Opportunity
PayPal users make $1.53 trillion in payments per year. If log in success rates increase even a fraction of a percent it can mean millions of dollars in revenue. With traditional log in methods, users face a long and complicated process of logging in. Passkeys present a new opportunity to provide users with a faster, safer log in experience.
The Old Way of Logging In
For many years, passwords, one-time codes, and other forms of knowledge based authentication have been the standard for logging in.
Password log in
Texted one-time code
The problem with the old ways
Passwords, one-time codes, and other forms of knowledge based authentication are:
Vulnerable to phishing attacks
A lengthy and frustrating process for users
Easily forgotten, requiring painful password resets
The Solution
Passkeys provide users a quick and easy way of logging in that is phishing resistant and more secure than traditional log in methods.
The Process
We set out with the goal of improving our log in experience by making it faster, easier, and more secure for our users.
How we measured success
Increase log in success rate
Decrease time to log in
Decrease drop off
Initial Passkey Launch
After our initial launch of passkeys, we saw a huge increase in log in success rate and a decreased time to log in. However, few users were choosing to enroll in passkeys, seeing only a 6.89% enrollment rate.
6.89%
Initial passkey enrollment rate
How do we increase passkey enrollment?
We needed to identify why users were resistant to creating passkeys and design a solution.
User Research
We conducted remote task-based moderated user testing of our log in and enrollment experiences.
What we wanted to learn
Why do some users skip enrolling in passkeys?
How do we explain passkeys to users in an easily comprehensible way?
The results.
Users positively responded when passkeys were associated with familiar concepts such as biometrics.
Participants said they want to be reminded of the benefits of passkeys.
Many unenrolled participants said they were in a hurry and simply skipped over enrollment
Our Hypotheses
Based on our initial research we formed 3 key hypotheses on how we could increase passkey enrollment and set out to test them.
Lead with biometrics
Leading with familiar biometrics focused content and graphics would increase passkey enrollment.
Give details
More detailed explanations of passkeys during enrollment would increase trust in passkeys.
Expand touchpoints
Prompting users to enroll during less hurried experiences would increase enrollment opportunities.
Content Testing
Through multiple rounds of live multi-variant content testing we discovered that users responded best when we tied the unfamiliar concept of passkeys with the familiar concept of biometrics. By optimizing content to focus around biometrics we were able to increase passkey enrollment by a total of 16%.
Three of the content variants we tested.
Graphic Testing
We tested multiple graphics and found that users were unfamiliar with the official passkey icon but responded to familiar biometric icons, particularly when the icons closely mimic easily recognized Face ID and Touch ID icons. The evolution of our graphics are shown below, from left to right. The final graphic (right most) improved passkey enrollment by 3% compared to the initial passkey icon (left most).
01
Official passkey icon, not recognized by users.
02
Tying familiar concept of biometrics with PayPal logo.
03
Mimics familiar Face ID and Touch ID icons.
Collaboration with the FIDO Alliance
The FIDO Alliance is an open industry association with a focused mission: reduce the world’s reliance on passwords. To accomplish this, the FIDO Alliance promotes the development of, use of, and compliance with standards for authentication using passkeys.
As a part of the FIDO Alliance I collaborated with top tech firms to conduct user research and design industry-wide guidelines. The results of the FIDO Alliance’s research informed our passkey implementation and, in turn, our research informed the FIDO Alliance’s passkey guidelines. We established industry-leading design guidelines to define best practices for the implementation of passkey log in, enrollment, and settings.
The FIDO Alliance’s web page for passkey design guidelines.
The Solution
A quick, easy, and secure log in experience with a streamlined passkey enrollment process.
Passkey Enrollment
Based on our research findings our optimized enrollment process and tied the unfamiliar concept of passkeys with the familiar, biometrics.
Passkey enrollment experience on PayPal.com.
Passkey Log In
Passkeys allow users to log in without the need for entering emails or difficult to remember passwords all while keeping their account secure.
Passkey log in experience on PayPal.com
We also improved access to passkeys by expanding passkey enrollment across:
Log In (web and native app)
Checkout
Onboarding
Account settings
Password recovery
Marketing communication
These expanded enrollment touch points brought passkey enrollment to less hurried experiences, which was identified as an opportunity during user research.
Marketing Passkeys
We capitalized on email communications and social media marketing to introduce more users to passkeys.
Marketing video promoted across PayPal’s social media.
The Results
2X
faster checkout
37%
enrollment rate
97%
log in success rate
54.6 M
users enrolled in passkeys
PayPal CEO, Alix Chriss, Introduces Passkeys Worldwide
During a global keynote presentation, PayPal CEO Alix Chriss introduced PayPal’s new passkey experience, demonstrating the new ease of checkout with passkeys.
“This will enable you to check out twice as fast, all with the same level of security you’ve come to expect from us.”