AI agents are beginning to act on behalf of users inside banking applications - initiating transfers, checking balances, filing disputes. But the authentication infrastructure those agents rely on was designed for humans, not autonomous software. That gap is the next major security problem in financial services authentication.

Secure Payment Confirmation, expanding Visa and Mastercard passkey programs, and FIDO2's growing role in 3DS flows are converging toward a single credential layer at checkout. For financial institutions, understanding how these pieces fit together is no longer optional - it is a core architectural question.

The five practices that separate high-adoption passkey deployments from stalled ones. A practitioner's playbook grounded in FIDO Alliance guidance and real implementation patterns.

The FIDO Alliance reports over 15 billion accounts can now use passkeys. That number changes the calculus for every bank still debating whether to deploy.

This fourth blog in a five-part series that explores the current state of passkeys and why enhanced implementations, what we call Passkeys+, are essential for meeting the security and compliance demands of

For decades, passwords were the default key to the digital world. Easy to implement and familiar to users, they offered convenience, but at a steep cost. As our digital footprints grew, passwords became both a security liability and a user burden. Complex requirements, frequent resets, and rampant reuse opened the floodgates to breaches, phishing attacks, and endless frustration.