Increasing Passkey Adoption Through Behavioral UX Strategy
Redesigned the authentication experience by introducing a progressive Passkey onboarding journey that reduced sign-in friction, increased Passkey adoption by 61%, reduced SMS costs by 30%, and delivered a faster, more secure authentication experience.
4 Months
iOS & Android
Product Manager, Engineering, Security, Research, Marketing
Timeline:
Platfom:
Stakeholder:
The Challenge
Despite Passkey offering a faster and more secure authentication method, adoption remained significantly below business expectations. Most users continued relying on SMS verification, increasing operational costs while limiting the adoption of passwordless authentication.
The challenge extended beyond introducing a new login method—it required changing user behavior without disrupting the primary payment experience.
Business Goals
Introduce and increase Passkey adoption
Reduce SMS authentication costs
Improve login speed and security
Maintain payment conversion throughout the authentication journey
Discovery
To understand why adoption remained low, I combined authentication analytics, stakeholder interviews, customer feedback, and behavioral research.
Rather than identifying technical limitations, the research revealed that adoption barriers were primarily driven by user perception and timing.
Key Insights
The setup felt like additional work
Since SMS verification was already familiar, users perceived Passkey enrollment as unnecessary effort.
Poor timing reduced adoption Prompting
users during payment or checkout interrupted their primary goal and reduced willingness to adopt a new authentication method. These findings shifted the design focus from promoting a security feature to designing the right experience at the right moment.
Product Strategy
Instead of increasing visibility, the solution focused on increasing user readiness. The authentication experience was designed around four principles:
Educate before asking
Help users understand the value before requesting any commitment.
Build trust before commitment
Address concerns around security and account recovery early in the journey.
Reduce perceived effort
Keep enrollment lightweight by leveraging familiar platform interactions. Respect user intent Introduce Passkey after users complete their primary task instead of interrupting high-intent payment flows.
These principles became the foundation for every design decision throughout the project.
Design Exploration
Several onboarding approaches were explored before selecting the final experience.
Option A — Prompt during checkout (Rejected )
Although highly visible, it interrupted payment completion and introduced unnecessary friction during a high-intent task.
Option B — Prompt immediately after sign-in (Considered)
Improved visibility but users still lacked enough context to understand why they should switch.
Option C — Progressive onboarding (Selected)
A guided onboarding experience introduced Passkey gradually, educating users, building trust, and presenting enrollment only when it naturally aligned with user intent.
This approach balanced business objectives with a seamless user experience.
Solution
The authentication journey was redesigned into a progressive onboarding experience that guided users from awareness to adoption without interrupting their primary goals.
Educate
Clear, benefit-focused messaging explained what Passkeys are, why they are more secure than SMS, and how they simplify future sign-ins.
Reassure
Transparent guidance addressed common concerns around device changes and account recovery, increasing user confidence before enrollment.
Simplify
The setup flow was streamlined into a lightweight, platform-native experience that minimized cognitive effort and reduced perceived complexity.
Introduce at the right moment
Rather than interrupting payment or checkout, Passkey enrollment was presented after users completed their primary task, preserving conversion while maximizing adoption.
Together, these design decisions transformed Passkey enrollment into a natural extension of the authentication experience.
Validation
Before development, usability testing evaluated user understanding, confidence, and completion across the redesigned experience.
Following design refinement, A/B testing measured:
Passkey enrollment rate
Authentication completion rate
User drop-off
Setup completion time
The redesigned flow consistently outperformed the existing experience, validating the design direction before full rollout.
Business Impact
✔ 61% increase in Passkey adoption
✔ 30% reduction in SMS authentication costs
✔ Faster and more secure authentication experience
✔ Established a scalable onboarding framework for future authentication initiatives
The project demonstrated that improving adoption required changing user behavior—not simply introducing a better authentication technology.
Key Learnings
This project reinforced that successful authentication design is driven as much by psychology as technology.
Rather than asking users to adopt a new security feature immediately, the experience focused on building understanding, confidence, and trust before requesting commitment. By aligning the onboarding flow with user intent and validating each decision through research and experimentation, the redesign achieved measurable business outcomes while creating a more intuitive authentication experience.