Bitwarden acquires Swedish start-up for passwordless login

Password manager Bitwarden acquires Passwordless.dev. This start-up helps companies implement passwordless login in their software. As far as we know, it is the first acquisition that Bitwarden has made.

Bitwarden announces the acquisition of Passwordless.dev on its website. With the acquisition, the team of the Swedish start-up becomes part of Bitwarden. The company says that Passwordless.dev’s services will continue to be offered independently to developers after the acquisition, separate from other Bitwarden products. The company will use Passwordless.dev’s technology in its own products. Bitwarden does not mention an acquisition amount.

Passwordless.dev offers an open source framework that makes it easier for developers to implement passwordless authentication in their software. This service is now available under Bitwarden. The company is offering Passwordless.dev this quarter available for free as a beta. Paid versions will follow later, although a free version will also remain available after that period.

Bitwarden will also receive support for passkeys this year, the company says in its blog post. Passkeys were introduced in May 2022 by the FIDO Alliance. The feature should completely replace passwords with the authentication of a device itself, such as Face ID on iPhones or a fingerprint scanner. This would be more secure because no passwords are required and therefore cannot be stolen.

Several companies have indicated that they will support passkeys. Apple previously added support in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, while Google added the feature to Chrome in December. Password managers Dashlane and 1Password will also integrate the feature. Bitwarden itself currently already supports logging in via, for example, Face ID and fingerprint scanners on smartphones. The paid version of the password manager can also handle yubikeys and other security keys.