The Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp has joined the growing legions of apps and services to support passkeys.
Initially available to Android users, the passwordless authentication feature makes it possible to secure a WhatsApp account with face recognition, a fingerprint, or a PIN. It is a security feature that is billed as not only offering greater protection than passwords but also being faster to use.
WhatsApp’s support for passkeys has not exactly come out of the blue; it is something that has been evident in beta versions of the app for a while already. But the public launch of the security feature comes hot on the heels of Google starting to nudge its users towards adopting passkeys as a means of account authentication.
News of the rollout appeared on X:
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=BetaNews&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-2&features=e30%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1713948410942804433&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fbetanews.com%2F2023%2F10%2F17%2Fwhatsapp-adds-passkey-support-to-boost-security%2F&sessionId=b942e8266104a91afc02f1f8214ee9a7d39d1e77&siteScreenName=BetaNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=01917f4d1d4cb%3A1696883169554&width=550px
For now, WhatsApp is only making passkeys an option for Android users. While it is difficult to imagine that the same security won’t be offered to iPhone owners as well, there is currently no news about quite when this might happen.
