Passkeys & Conversion: How Passkeys increase Login Success

1. Introduction: How Passkeys increase Conversion Rate and Revenue#

Passkeys are a powerful lever for conversion rate optimization. This article covers how passkeys reduce login drop-off, increase sign-in success rates and drive measurable revenue growth backed by case studies.

How often has this happened: You wanted to access your favorite e-commerce retailer but couldn't remember your password. Resetting it didn't seem worth it, so you just left. This shows how crucial frictionless authentication is for user retention.

Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) aims to streamline this experience. The biggest potential is in keeping customers returning to realize their lifetime value (LTV), so don't solely focus on the initial sign-up. With rising customer acquisition costs (CAC), retaining users with the best authentication experience matters more than ever. Passkeys achieve this for both new and existing users.

2. How KAYAK uses Passkeys for Conversion Optimization#

KAYAK, the online travel company and one of the first big B2C brands that rolled out passkeys, serves as a brilliant example. According to Google's case study, two-thirds of new sign-ups now choose passkeys and sign-up/sign-in time has been reduced by 50%.

As soon as iOS 16 was released, passkeys were introduced as their default option when creating a new account on Apple devices. Existing users were also able to add passkeys to their accounts. Within just three weeks, thousands of users created passkeys. Notably, almost 20% of those early passkey creators were existing users who manually opted in - a strong signal of user demand for passwordless login. The overall feedback was absolutely positive (which is not often the case when new security features are rolled out). Consumers who could not create a passkey were provided with email magic links as passwordless fallback. It's expected that the share of non-passkey logins will decline over time until passkeys are the dominant login method.

Read our full analysis on KAYAK passkeys here.

3. Passkey Adoption Rate Benchmarks beyond KAYAK#

The KAYAK results aren't an outlier. Multiple sources confirm passkeys dramatically improve login success. For instance the FIDO Passkey Index shows that the passkey success rates is on average 93% vs 63% for passwords across multiple deployments.

Moreover, this report finds that sign-ins are on average 73% faster with passkeys than with passwords (8.5s with passkeys vs. 31.2s with passwords on average). Further, there were 81% fewer help desk incidents with passkeys (mostly due to less account and password resets).

4. Four Checkout Growth Levers from Passkeys#

Let's break down what these UX benefits of passkeys now can mean for the checkout growth. In general, there are 4 growth levers.

4.1 Increase Login Success Rate at Checkout#

The checkout login gate is where most authentication drop-off happens. Passkeys allow to optimize this critical step:

• First of all, passkeys have a much higher login success rate with 93% vs 63% for passwords (FIDO data). This will be the biggest benefit for your conversion.

• Moreover, the annoying and frustrating "wrong password" error messages can be significantly reduce (which block purchase completion).
• Returning users can authenticate instantly, even if they haven't visited the shop in months (passkeys can't be forgotten and only tech-savvy users manually delete them, not the average shopper)
• Passkeys allow for a usernameless login step. If you implement Conditional UI or one-tap passkey buttons, users don't even need to think of their username (e.g. email address), when they want to authenticate (this can also be a major point of drop-off, especially if they use different email addresses or haven't visited the shop in a while)

4.2 Reduce Time-to-Purchase with faster Authentication#

Every second of friction increases cart abandonment. Passkeys complete in 8.5 seconds on average vs 31.2 seconds for passwords (this is a 73% speed improvement).

For the checkout conversion rate, this can be especially beneficial in a number of situations, such as the following ones:

• Mobile checkout: Typing passwords on small screens is painful and often prone to errors. However, Face ID, Touch ID or the Android biometric equivalents are optimized to work on mobile devices and can be completed in one tap.
• Flash sales / limited inventory: If you offer limited deals or flash sales, you want to create speed pressure to convert more customers. However, if your login takes ages, all your psychological and scarcity tactics might not pay off and customers abandon their carts. A speedy login helps convert more of those customers.
• Repeat purchases: Passkeys don't make you lose customers. You give returning customers instant access to their profiles and they purchase more often if their login is quick for return visits.

4.3 Eliminate Password Reset Abandonment#

According to FIDO Alliance research, 42% of consumers have abandoned a purchase due to forgotten passwords. For Gen Z and Millennials, this figure is even higher.

Passkeys eliminate the "forgot password" flow entirely. Users can't forget a biometric. This keeps customers in the purchase funnel instead of losing them to email-based recovery flows (where many never return).

To ensure high customer retention, trigger passkey authentication if you know a passkey exists for this user on this device. If no passkey exists, let the user log in the conventional way and after successful purchase, ask them to create a passkey (simplifying their next login).

4.4 Convert Guest Checkouts to Logged-in Purchases#

Guest checkout exists because account creation friction is too high. Passkeys change this equation and basically help you get more customers who would have used a guest checkout to create an account:

• Passkey sign-up takes seconds: For passkeys, there's very little to think about. You don't need to come up, type or remember a new password. Just scan your face or finger in no time.

• Post-purchase passkey prompt: Even if a customer decides to do guest checkout, offer them to "Save your details with Face ID" to convert those guests to accounts. Combined with clever copy highlighting benefits ("quicker sign-in next time"), this can be a huge conversion driver.

More logged-in users mean better customer data which can be used for higher repeat purchase rates and lifetime value (LTV). Read our detailed article on guest checkouts vs. forced logins for more details.

5. How Corbado can help#

Implementing passkeys is one thing. Measuring their impact on conversion is another. Corbado provides authentication analytics and observability purpose-built for passkey rollouts:

5.1 Conversion Analytics Dashboard#

Track the metrics that matter for growth:

• Login success rate: Compare passkey vs. password users in real-time
• Time-to-auth: Measure sign-in speed improvements of different authentication methods (see how passkeys are quicker than other forms of authentication)
• Drop-off funnel: See exactly where users abandon the authentication flow and also why they abandon the flow (independent if it's a passkey login or password login)
• Fallback rate: Understand when and why users revert to passwords. This is crucial if you're aiming for a high passkey adoption.

5.2 100+ Signals per Event#

Corbado tracks very granular data for every authentication attempt, enabling precise A/B testing and funnel optimization. With Corbado you can segment the conversion metrics from above by the following dimensions

• OS and browser segmentation (identify which combinations have highest drop-off)
• Device capability detection (e.g. passkey-readiness, Bluetooth availability for cross-device authentication)
• Credential manager distribution (e.g. iCloud Keychain vs. Google Password Manager stored passkeys)

5.3 Real-Time Alerts & Debugging#

Often, issues in the authentication process are only detected once customers call support (which they often don't do in e-commerce, they just churn to competitors). With Corbado you can pro-actively solve this issue, as you'll get

• Automated alerts when success rates drop (so you can catch issues e.g. from OS updates that break your login flows)
• Step-by-step event logs that you can use to understand particular login events / path and why they might have failed (this can be then used to analyze similar other users / devices). Basically, you'll get user-level debugging to diagnose specific authentication issues.

This observability helps growth teams prove ROI and iterate on passkey flows based on data, not guesswork.

6. Conclusion: Passkeys as your next Growth Experiment#

The data is clear: passkeys deliver 93% login success vs 63% for passwords, 73% faster authentication, and eliminate the password reset abandonment that costs you 42% of customers who forget their credentials.

For checkout conversion, this translates into four actionable growth levers:

1. Higher login success at the checkout gate
2. Faster time-to-purchase (8.5s vs 31.2s)
3. Zero password reset abandonment
4. More account sign-ups from former guest checkouts

Don't treat passkeys as just a security upgrade. Treat them as your next growth experiment. Start with passkey-first for new sign-ups, add post-login nudges for existing users and measure the impact on your conversion funnel. KAYAK saw two-thirds of new users choose passkeys within weeks. Your customers are ready.

FAQ#

Do passkeys improve conversion rate?#

Yes. FIDO data shows 93% passkey login success vs 63% for passwords. Dashlane reported 70% higher sign-in conversion after implementing passkeys.

How do passkeys reduce login drop-off?#

No password to remember, no reset flow, and authentication completes in ~8.5 seconds vs 31.2 seconds for passwords.

What metrics prove passkeys drive growth?#

Login success rate, time-to-login, login drop-off rate, password reset volume, help desk ticket reduction and conversion throughput at checkout.

What's a realistic passkey uplift to expect?#

~30% improvement in login success, 50-73% faster sign-in, 81% fewer support tickets. Results depend on your baseline and implementation quality.

What's the best passkey rollout pattern?#

Start passkey-first for new sign-ups, add post-login nudges for existing users. At KAYAK, 20% of early passkey creators were existing users who opted in within three weeks.