Twitter Launch Phone Number Logins, To Do Away With Passwords

Twitter have launched a new way to let users sign up for your mobile app.

Called Digits, new users can sign into an app using just their phone number.

You simply choose your country’s region code and enter a phone number, and you are sent a confirmation code to input into the app.

In a blog post, Twitter said: “Building an onboarding flow that encourages users to sign up for your app can be challenging. Many people are cautious to give up their entire social history to an app they just downloaded, and email and password logins as a last resort are cumbersome.”

Facebook currently own the social login space, powering 55% of all social logins, compared to Twitter’s 5%, and is the current go-to method used by dating apps.

Twitter’s new feature is competition for Facebook’s one-click sign ups, hoping to improve app engagement by doing away with forgettable usernames and passwords that might mean apps lose customers.

The phone verification software is live in 191 countries and has support in 28 languages.

They also said that Digits could help apps grow in emerging markets:

“Building an onboarding flow that encourages users to sign up for your app can be challenging. Many people are cautious to give up their entire social history to an app they just downloaded, and email and password logins as a last resort are cumbersome.”

Digits is also available for desktop sign ups, users confirming their identity by entering the code sent to their phone.

Twitter also shared an example of how apps could use Digits creatively, as MacDonald’s did with their Alarm app:

“The app enables friends to share offers for McDonald’s food and beverages. In order to redeem the offer, a person must authenticate as a real user. McDonald’s felt that social sign-ins put too much burden on a user to share personal details, and that email addresses and passwords were too often forgotten or onerous to manage. Digits enables McDonald’s to quickly authenticate real users and get them into the app with a minimum of friction.”

To find out more, go here.