Passkeys / Firefox / Paypal

Ask the Community Password Manager
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1

Today the updated Bitwarden addon for Firefox arrived which I was waiting for eagerly because of the passkeys support.

I successfully tested it with passkeys.io and wanted to potentially use it with Paypal.
But within Paypal they just tell me that my system does not allow creating a passkey which is wrong because I did it a minute before with passkeys.io.

Any idea why that is not working. Is Paypal using another “filter” for supported systems and if so, why?

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3

I deleted my previous post, because PayPal seems complicated. Maybe it is best, when you search for the PayPal “help page” for passkeys yourself. (I’m not sure if they have the same conditions for every region)

E.g. here in Germany, the passkey function is relatively new in PayPal - and my “help page”, if I understand it correctly, seems to suggest, that a passkey can not be created in Windows at the moment, but on Mac/iOS with Safari or Android with Chrome.

I don’t know the reasoning of PayPal for this…

4

Was this using Firefox on Windows? PayPal is only supporting passkeys on mobile devices and only using certain browsers for whatever reason. This is from their website:

Today, passkeys for PayPal are supported by Safari and Chrome web browsers on Apple devices running iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura and Google devices running Android 9+. Passkeys are not supported on web view browsers and Windows devices. On a Windows device, the user must use a password or SMS OTP to log in.

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5

Yeah, I’m not sure what is going on. I’m using Fx on Fedora Linux, was able to create a passkey on Github and Google, but when I try on Kayak and Paypal, it says that Fx doesn’t support passkeys, which is obviously incorrect. Does anyone know what is going on? Seems a bit concerning that some sites are actively excluding Fx from this functionality and demanding you use Chrome or a Chrome-a-clone.

6

I just tried to create a passkey on PayPal and they’re still stating that a passkey cannot be created from a chromium-based browser and I confirmed this with BRAVE and EDGE. Disappointed.

7

Yo I got it running.

  • Take Chrome
  • Press F12 (Inspect tool)
  • Press Ctrl + Shift + M (or click the second symbol on the top left of the new window)
  • Now you can spoof Browsers and different operating systems
  • I chose iPad Pro. I dont know if other work nor do I care.
  • …
  • Profit

You will have a logo of Safari and Apple next to your passkey, but that cant be changed.

Have fun

Chrome Version 121.0.6167.161
Bitwareden Plugin Version 2024.2.0
Server-Version 2024.2.0

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I think we are going to have a tough time getting passkeys set up on various websites for some time. I’ve been monitoring the FIDO Alliance site which publishes a list of companies, etc. that support Passkeys. What I’m finding is, actually getting it to work is spotty. For example I tried setting up CVS. I can get to where it attempts to set up a passkey but it gives me an error like “Unable to enable passwordless login at this time”. That’s using Brave on Ubuntu.

I have no idea if it was trying to set up a passkey on my phone (which was not connected via Bluetooth at the time) and failed for that reason? I wanted to store the passkey in my BW vault via the browser extension which is my preference.

Anyhow I wonder if the moderators here would be receptive to an updatable sticky where we could post found solutions to setting up passkeys for various websites (such as the workaround illustrated above)?

9

I’ve marked @LordSexy’s comment as a Solution, which will in effect sticky it at the top of the thread. Work-arounds for websites other than Paypal would not belong in this thread, though.