On Friday, August 7th, 2026, the FIDO Alliance India Working Group hosted its third annual in-person Member Meetup and Workshop at Google Ananta, Bengaluru, gathering approximately 170 security leaders, engineers, and public sector visionaries. Building on the momentum from previous editions (2024 Recap and 2025 Recap), this year’s workshop highlighted major breakthroughs in national digital identity integration, mass-scale passkey deployments, and enterprise security standards across India.
National Identity Innovation: Aadhaar Meets Passkeys
Santhosh Kumar and Dr. Subramanian Neelakantan from the Society for Electronic Transactions and Security (SETS) introduced “SAAVI: Secure Authentication and Authorization via Verified Identity,” an architecture binding Aadhaar identity verification with FIDO device-bound passkeys. By establishing a cryptographic bridge between India’s national identity infrastructure and FIDO open standards, SETS demonstrated a high-assurance, privacy-preserving access framework engineered specifically for Indian e-governance and public sector services.
Passkeys at Scale: Real-World Success Stories
India’s consumer internet and payment leaders presented field-tested data on how replacing SMS OTPs with WebAuthn passkeys dramatically improves conversion, cuts costs, and eliminates fraud.
- PhonePe: Yaswanth Kuppam and Manimaran S detailed how India’s leading fintech app scaled passkeys to hundreds of millions of users by separating front-door identity (frictionless entry via WebAuthn) from financial authorization (mandated UPI PIN). Bypassing telecom SMS delays yielded a 60% reduction in login time alongside major operational savings.
- MakeMyTrip: Aditya Gaba and Chandrapal Yadav reframed travel authentication as “a runway, not a queue.” Deploying context-aware prompts with clear messaging (“Skip OTP next time”) produced 2.7x faster logins than SMS OTP, 4x faster logins than email, a 25% reduction in SMS costs, and a 61% enrollment rate among eligible users.
- Visa: Ruby Jeyarani presented Visa Payment Passkeys, demonstrating how cryptographic authentication is transforming click-to-pay digital checkout flows to deliver seamless, fraud-resistant transactions at scale across India.
Platform Evolution & Standards
Google leaders and industry experts highlighted key alignments between open FIDO standards and native platform APIs.
- Android & Chrome Innovations: Google’s Niharika Arora, Eiji Kitamura, and Lee Campbell showcased Android Credential Manager features. Highlights included the Restore Credentials API for frictionless device upgrades, the Signal API for credential lifecycle management, the Email Verification Protocol (EVP) for linkless email verification, and Digital Credentials APIs (ISO 18013-5 / mDLs).
- Demystifying Passkeys: Vincent Delitz (Corbado) provided plain-language frameworks for passkey adoption, reinforcing domain-bound phishing resistance (“same gesture, different job”) and the core adoption formula: Adoption=CreationUsage.
Emerging Frontiers: AI Threats, Regulatory Shift & Post-Quantum Security
Industry experts addressed the rapidly evolving threat landscape and upcoming regulatory mandates.
- Securing the Account Lifecycle: FIDO Alliance CTO Nishant Kaushik delivered a keynote on how generative AI is making social engineering attacks cheap, fast, and scalable. He detailed the Alliance’s work across the full account lifecycle, as well as new technical working groups for Agentic AI Authentication and Agentic AI Payments.
- Regulatory Momentum & Panel Discussion: Moderated by Niharika Arora (Google), a cross-industry panel featuring Muralidharan Chandrasekaran (Ensurity), Yaswanth Kuppam (PhonePe), Bharadwaj D. Maskikar (Thales), Chandrapal Yadav (MakeMyTrip), and Santhosh Kumar (SETS) addressed the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) push away from SMS OTPs toward cryptographic authentication. The panellists also debated device-binding strategies, user education across diverse demographics, and post-quantum readiness.
Acknowledgments & Thank You to Our Sponsors
A sincere thank you to our sponsors for their support in making this event a resounding success: Ensurity, Infineon, OneSpan, Taisys, and Thales.
Along with interactive demo booths and vibrant networking over coffee and lunch breaks, attendees participated in giveaways featuring over 100 FIDO security keys alongside exclusive FIDO-branded merchandise, including coffee mugs, and many others.
This 3rd annual meetup reinforced India’s position as a global epicenter for phishing-resistant identity innovation. As regulatory guidance aligns with technical execution, the FIDO Alliance Community in India continues to set the global benchmark for scaling secure, passwordless experiences to hundreds of millions of citizens.
To review the full agenda and speaker lineup, please visit the FIDO Alliance Event Page.
