Academic Seminar

The Usability Challenges of Passwordless Authentication

Systematic Literature Review on biometric, OTP, and security key authentication methods.

Ravi Rai
5 min read

This academic seminar conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) analyzing papers published between 2019 and 2023 to understand the overall advantages, disadvantages, and specific usability challenges of passwordless authentication methods.

Research Questions#

RQ1: What are the overall advantages and disadvantages of various passwordless authentication methods in terms of security and usability?

RQ2: What specific challenges do users encounter when using passwordless authentication methods?

Methods Evaluated#

1

Biometric Authentication (Facial, Fingerprint, Retina)

2

One-Time Code Authentication (OTP)

3

Security Keys

Key Findings#

Usability vs Security

While biometrics offer convenience, privacy and accuracy remain concerns. OTPs are user-friendly but vulnerable to phishing, and security keys are highly secure but depend on physical devices.

User Adoption

Only 35% of participants were fully willing to use passwordless authentication without restrictions. 28% were open with certain conditions, highlighting that mistrust and fear of losing account access (24%) are significant hurdles.

Core Challenges

The research identified major concerns including mistrust (22%), lack of universal access (15%), and fear of others accessing the account (11%), which must be addressed for widespread adoption.

Ravi Rai

Ravi Rai

AI Engineer & Full Stack Developer · Germany

Expert in Generative AI, LLMs, and Data Engineering. Passionate about building intelligent, agentic systems and scalable full-stack applications.

More about the author →
© 2026 Ravi Rai. All rights reserved.|Privacy