A passkey is a new way of logging in to online accounts, services, and apps that’s designed to be faster, easier to use, and more secure than passwords.
Passkeys rely on public-key cryptography to verify your identity rather than a username and password. This means you don’t have to remember anything, so you can’t forget them like a password, and your devices get a single-use login credential each time you sign in to an account, so your account details can’t easily be stolen by a hacker or phishing attack. If all this sounds kind of complicated, don’t worry—it all happens in the background. Logging in is actually really simple (again, more on that in a bit).
Passkeys were created by an industry group called the FIDO Alliance that includes companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, 1Password, Dashlane, American Express, Intel, Mastercard, Meta, PayPal, Samsung, Visa, and lots more. Seriously, passwords are widely considered to be a huge global problem, so there are a lot of companies interested in a better, more secure solution.