G+D to scale passkey authentication push in India over next two years

German firm Giesecke+Devrient plans to scale passkey-based biometric authentication in India, partnering with banks and card networks to boost trust and improve transaction success rates

At a time when India’s digital payments ecosystem continues to scale, the next phase of growth will hinge on the reliability of transaction infrastructure and trust of nearly a billion users within the system.

 

To boost trust and transaction success rates, companies are gradually rolling out biometric authentication across card payments and UPI as an alternative to one-time passwords (OTPs).

 

For global companies such as Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), biometric authentication such as passkeys is set to be a key priority over the next two years, with a focus on partnering with banks and card networks in the country, said Tapesh Bhatnagar, head of Digital Solutions at the firm.

 

The Germany-headquartered company, which has had a presence in India for the past two decades, is a solutions provider in the domain of digital security, financial platforms and currency technology.

 

“Authentication will continue to be our focus for the next two years, and we want to make sure that the passkeys are getting deployed at scale within the banking segment,” Bhatnagar said.

 

This move, he explained, was not restricted to authentication of e-commerce transactions where card networks are largely keen currently.

 

He added that in addition to such transactions the company was working on introducing passkeys to mobile banking customers taking up different sets of activities including internet banking.

 

“We want to work with banks and help them implement passkeys for both mobile and web channels, authenticate customers using passkeys for internet banking and mobile banking, and all kinds of transactions which a user might do,” he said.

 

Global card networks Mastercard and Visa are introducing passkeys in India that will allow users to authenticate card payments with face scans or fingerprints, providing an alternative for OTPs, Business Standard had reported in February.

 

Biometrics, as an alternative to OTPs, eliminate challenges such as delayed messages, incorrect entries, and redirection errors, thereby improving transaction success rates.

 

The rollouts follow the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) guidelines issued last year that require at least one of the two factors of authentication be dynamically generated or proven, paving the way of biometric verification starting April 2026.

 

Multiple Indian players including Razorpay, PhonePe, Cred, and BHIM have introduced biometric authentication for UPI transactions. The use case was first demonstrated at the Global Fintech Fest 2025.

 

Razorpay said nearly 35 per cent of payment failures come from authentication challenges. The success rate improves to 95 per cent after passkeys are introduced.

 

“We have seen it has a large impact area when it comes to increasing trust in digital payments… Everybody has been using PINs or OTPs for years which are not secure. One doesn’t have to deal with complex tech with passkeys,” Bhatnagar added.

 

Meanwhile, the company is also focusing on offering premium products such as metal cards to issuing banks in India.

 

“Topics like metal, topics like eco cards or recyclable cards, ocean plastics, these are the topics which we discuss with our customers. Solutions like AI-driven image generation solutions, which can be offered and kind of embedded into the mobile app of the issuing bank are being discussed,” he said.

 

In India, the company is also exploring how banks can handle the stock management of cards across different vendors in a move to engage with lenders beyond just providing them with cards.

 

The focus, he said, was also on developing solutions globally from India through the company’s global research and development wing in Pune.