Most CRO effort at checkout goes toward payment: adding Apple Pay, trimming form fields, showing costs earlier. Fewer teams touch the step before any of that, the moment a shopper is asked to create an account or type a password they will immediately forget. Baymard Institute's ongoing checkout research still lists forced account creation as the second leading cause of cart abandonment, and in 2026 there is finally a fix that does not require ripping out your login system: the passkey, already sitting on most shoppers' phones because of Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Forced account creation causes roughly a quarter of cart abandonment, according to Baymard's checkout research. Passkeys, unlocked with a fingerprint or face scan instead of a typed password, cut that friction and complete authentication at a 93 percent success rate versus 63 percent for passwords, per FIDO Alliance data. Prompt for one right after purchase, not before it.
Why "create an account" is still costing you sales
The average cart abandonment rate sits at roughly 70 percent, and the reasons are not evenly distributed. Baymard's research on why shoppers abandon a cart puts unexpected extra costs at the top, cited by around 48 percent of abandoners, with forced account creation close behind at roughly a quarter. Checkout process complexity and lack of trust in payment security follow. Three of the top four reasons are entirely design decisions, not economic conditions, which is exactly why they show up on every CRO checklist and exactly why they are still worth revisiting.
| Reason for abandonment | Share of abandoners citing it |
|---|---|
| Extra costs too high at checkout (shipping, tax, fees) | ~48% |
| Forced to create an account | ~26% |
| Checkout process too long or complicated | ~22% |
| Did not trust the site with payment information | ~18% |
| Total cost not visible before final step | ~17% |
Passkeys do not touch the shipping cost or tax problem. They directly attack the account creation problem, and they do it without forcing a binary choice between "require an account" and "allow guest checkout forever," which is the trade-off most merchants have been stuck weighing for years.
What a passkey actually replaces
A passkey is a device-based credential, unlocked with the same fingerprint, face scan or device PIN a shopper already uses to unlock their phone, that stands in for typing a password. It is worth being precise about what it does and does not do. It does not replace Apple Pay or Google Pay, which handle the payment step. It replaces the authentication step: proving who you are when you sign in or set up an account. The two work well together because they use the same biometric trust a shopper already extends dozens of times a day.
FIDO Alliance's 2026 passkey reporting puts the performance gap in concrete terms: a 93 percent authentication success rate for passkeys versus 63 percent for passwords, an average 8.5 second sign-in versus 31.2 seconds for a password, and more than 5 billion passkeys now in active use globally with 75 percent of people having enabled one on at least one account. Those are not small margins. A checkout step that fails more than a third of the time it is attempted, which is roughly what a 63 percent password success rate implies, is a conversion problem hiding in plain sight.
How fast is this actually moving in ecommerce?
Industry tracking from passwordless-authentication vendors puts ecommerce passkey adoption at roughly 35 percent as of mid-2026, with forecasts pointing toward 45 percent or higher by the end of the year. Take the exact percentage as directional rather than precise, since it comes from vendors selling passkey infrastructure rather than an independent auditor, but the direction lines up with what checkout platforms are doing: most major providers now support passkeys natively in their merchant tooling, and Apple Pay and Google Pay's biometric checkout flows have already done the work of training shoppers to expect a face or fingerprint scan instead of typing anything.
We would not force every returning shopper to switch overnight. We would add a passkey option alongside the existing login, measure enrollment and repeat-purchase completion rate for three or four weeks, and only make it the default once the data backs it up rather than the trend.
Where to put the prompt
Placement matters more than the technology itself. The evidence so far points to one clear rule: prompt for a passkey immediately after a completed purchase, not during checkout and never before it. Asking a first-time shopper to set up a passkey in the middle of buying something adds a decision at the exact moment you want zero decisions. Offering it on the order confirmation screen, when the sale is already made and the shopper is in a good mood, converts enrollment without any risk to the transaction that funded the ask in the first place.
- Leave your existing password login in place. Do not remove it as a fallback, especially for shoppers on older devices or unfamiliar browsers.
- Add a passkey prompt on the post-purchase confirmation screen, framed around speed for next time rather than security.
- Track enrollment rate and, separately, the completion rate on the next purchase for shoppers who enrolled versus those who did not.
- Extend the prompt to account settings and login screens only after the post-purchase moment proves out.
- Revisit guest checkout defaults last. Passkeys reduce the cost of having an account, but a guest option should stay available regardless.
What this doesn't fix
Passkeys solve authentication friction, not the other three reasons on the abandonment list. Shipping costs that surprise a shopper at the final step, a checkout with too many fields, and low trust signals around payment security all need their own fixes, and none of them go away because login got easier. Treat this as one lever pulled correctly, not a replacement for the rest of the checkout audit. If form length or surprise costs are your bigger problem, our notes on checkout form fields killing conversion and the 2026 cart abandonment recovery stack cover those directly, and passkeys pair naturally with the biometric flows already discussed in our piece on digital wallet checkout conversion.
Frequently asked questions
What is a passkey and how is it different from a password?
A passkey is a device-based credential, unlocked with a fingerprint, face scan or device PIN, that replaces typing a password. It cannot be phished or reused across a data breach the way a password can, and FIDO Alliance data puts passkey sign-in success at 93 percent versus 63 percent for passwords.
Do passkeys replace Apple Pay or Google Pay at checkout?
No. Passkeys authenticate who a shopper is when signing in or creating an account. Apple Pay and Google Pay handle the payment step itself. They solve different friction points and work well together, since both rely on the same biometric unlock shoppers already trust.
How much does forced account creation hurt conversion?
Baymard Institute's ongoing checkout usability research lists forced account creation as the second leading cause of cart abandonment, cited by roughly a quarter of shoppers who abandon, behind only unexpected costs like shipping and tax.
When should an ecommerce site prompt shoppers to set up a passkey?
Right after a completed purchase, not before it. Prompting for a passkey during checkout adds a decision at the worst possible moment. Offering it immediately after the order confirms, when the shopper has already committed, converts enrollment without risking the sale.
How fast is passkey adoption growing in ecommerce?
Industry tracking puts ecommerce passkey adoption at roughly 35 percent in mid-2026, with forecasts pointing toward 45 percent or higher by the end of the year, driven largely by merchants who added prompts at the post-purchase account creation step rather than earlier in the funnel.
The takeaway
Checkout optimization keeps circling back to payment buttons because payment buttons are visible and easy to test. The account creation step is where a real, measurable share of shoppers actually leave, and passkeys are the first fix in years that removes the friction without forcing a fight over whether accounts should be required at all. Add the option after purchase, measure it honestly, and let the enrollment data decide how far to take it.