Stytch continues to raise its profile in the authentication space. The company has announced that its platform now supports Google One Tap authentication as well as biometric authentication via WebAuthn.
The latter appears to come by way of Stytch’s acquisition of Cotter, which was announced alongside the news that Stych had raised $90 million in VC capital through a Series B funding round last month. WebAuthn is a W3C standard developed by the FIDO Alliance that concerns the use of public key credentials to enable passwordless login for end users, including through biometric systems such as the iPhone’s TouchID and Face ID features.
In announcing the new authentication mechanisms, Stytch asserted that WebAuthn is “quickly trending toward ubiquity,” with about 90 percent of consumer devices supporting its authentication mechanisms.
While support for WebAuthn is an important development, Stytch highlighted its Google One Tap support in particular in its announcement, noting that Google One Tap has a strong track record in helping organizations to facilitate conversions. Reddit, for example, has nearly doubled new account creation and returning user conversion since implementing the system, according to Google.
That’s because Google One Tap makes it easy for end users to authenticate. It uses secure tokens to identify users, enabling them to sign in without having to enter credentials or even leaving a given app or site.
Such ease of use is central to the brand that Stytch is trying to build for itself. As CEO and co-founder Reed McGinley-Stempel explained, “Our competitors are authentication companies. We are a user experience and conversion company.”
McGinley-Stempel went on to note that Google One Tap “can be quite difficult” to integrate, explaining that Stytch’s aim is to do this heavy lifting for its clients.
The startup’s other co-founder, Julianna Lamb, echoed the sentiment with respect to WebAuthn. “Although WebAuthn offers multiple benefits, it is typically complex to integrate into onboarding and login flows — but not so when using the Stytch platform,” she explained.
The company’s pitch appears to be working, with Stytch asserting that since July of this year, the number of developers using its platform has gone from 350 to 3,500, and that hundreds of companies are now using it to build products.
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