How-To

How to Set Up Passkeys on Your Amazon Account

By Brian Burgess

Updated November 22, 2023

If you want a quick and secure sign in experience for Amazon, you can set up passkeys on your Amaon account. Here’s how to do it.

Recently, I’ve been getting emails from Amazon about setting up a Passkey for my Amazon Account. Of all my online accounts, ensuring my Amazon account is secure is important, given that my credit is linked and it’s easy to buy something with little to no verification beyond my username and password. Having just set up a passkey on my Google account, I figured I would demonstrate how to do it on Amazon as well—after all, who wouldn’t want to make things more secure and ditch the need for passwords?

As a reminder from the last article, passkeys authenticate your identity by using Face ID on your phone. You can also use a PIN, fingerprint scanner, or facial recognition via Windows Hello on your PC. A passkey provides a more secure account that resists phishing and brute force attacks, given that it requires additional verification, not just a password. Let’s dig into how to set it all up.

Set Up a Passkey on Your Amazon Account

When you finish setting up a passkey for your Amazon account, the sign-in experience is much easier. Getting it set up is still a bit clunky now, but we’ll show you how to do it.

In this example, we’re using Microsoft Edge on a Windows 11 system, but the steps should be the same regardless of the browser you use on Mac, Chromebook, and Linux. The difference will be your platform’s identification mechanism.

1. Launch a web browser on your Mac, Windows, Chromebook, or Linux computer.
2. Head to Amazon.com and sign into your account like you usually do.
3. Click the Account & Lists button in the top right corner.
4. On the Your Account page, click the Login & security button.
5. Enter your account password again to access the settings. If you have 2FA enabled for Amazon (which you should), enter the one-time password to sign in.
6. On the Login & Security page, click the Set up button next to the Passkey option.
7. You’ll find more details about passkeys for Amazon – click the Set up button on the explainer screen.
8. On a Windows system, you must verify your identity via Windows Hello using a PIN, fingerprint, or facial recognition. In our example, we’re using a PIN to verify our identity.
   Note: Don’t take too long to use Windows Hello or the option will time out after a few minutes.
9. Click OK on the verification message.
10. Once you complete the steps, a verification will appear at the top of the page, letting you know you can use a passkey to sign in from the PC without a password.

That’s all there is to it. You’re good to go! You can now use a passkey to sign into Amazon instead of a password. Also, Amazon will send you a confirmation message that the passkey was created for your account.

How to Sign into Amazon using a Passkey

So, now that you have created a passkey to sign into Amazon on your device, you’ll want to know how to use the passkey to sign into Amazon.

1. On the same device, go to the Amazon website.
2. Enter the email address associated with your account and click the Continue button.
3. On the Password screen, you’ll see a new passkey option. Click the Sign in with a passkey button.
4. Enter your verification via Windows Hello. It can be a PIN or biometrics data like your fingerprint or facial recognition – whatever you use to sign into Windows.

That’s all there is to it. Once you enter your Windows Hello verification, Amazon will sign you in, and you can begin using it.

What About Amazon Passkeys on Mobile?

At this time, Amazon hasn’t rolled out the option to create passkeys on its mobile app. The option to generate a passkey on the app isn’t available when opening the app and going to Account > Login & security > Passkey.

Currently, setting up passkeys on Amazon’s mobile app is unavailable. The company promises this ability is a future update.

So, if you want to add a passkey from your phone, you can open a browser like Safari, Chrome, or the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo and follow the steps above.

Setting Up Passkey for Amazon

Creating a passkey on Amazon is straightforward and provides a secure and quick sign-in experience. With a passkey, you never need to enter a password when signing into Amazon again. Currently, you cannot set up passkeys on your Amazon account via the mobile app. But you can use a browser on your phone or tablet if you don’t have a computer available.

Amazon is promising passkey support for the app in a future update—however, if you subscribe to our free Newsletter, we will notify you when they add this new feature.