Implementing Passkeys in 2026: A WebAuthn Walkthrough for Indian SaaS Teams

If you're still shipping bcrypt-hashed passwords in 2026, you're maintaining infrastructure to protect a secret that shouldn't need protecting in the first place. Passkeys sidestep the whole category of problem: the browser's navigator.credentials.create() call generates a public/private key pair on the device, your server only ever stores the public key, and the private key never crosses the network.

A minimal registration flow looks like this conceptually: your server issues a challenge, the client calls WebAuthn's create() with that challenge plus relying-party ID, the device prompts for biometric/PIN unlock, and the resulting attestation gets verified and stored server-side against the user. Login is the mirror image with get() instead of create(). No password field, no OTP SMS gateway bill, no bcrypt rounds tuning.

The parts that actually take engineering time aren't the happy path — they're the fallback for browsers/devices without WebAuthn support, the account-recovery flow when someone loses their only enrolled device, and cross-device testing across Safari/Chrome/Android WebView, which behave subtly differently around resident keys and platform authenticators. Budget real QA time here; it's where most passkey rollouts actually slip.

We wrote up the full cost breakdown and phased migration roadmap we use with Indian SaaS and enterprise clients — worth a read if you're scoping this for your own stack: https://zanisssoftwares.com/blog/passwordless-authentication-passkeys-india-2026