Google upgrades Chrome's Autofill experience with biometrics and more

Credit card transactions can now be enabled with your fingerprint.

What you need to know

• Google is making auto-filling passwords and credit card information in Chrome easier.
• Autofill for credit card information can now be secured via biometric authentication.
• Signing in to websites, meanwhile, will soon be as simple as a single click.

Using a password manager is not only convenient but also more secure, as it helps protect you from phishing attacks. The same goes for inputting your credit card information during online transactions, and thankfully, most browsers and password managers, including the one that's built into Chrome, can do both.

To make the experience in Chrome even better, Google this week announced two big changes to how Autofill for passwords and credit card information works in its browser.

The first is the use of biometric authentication for credit card information. If you had stored your credit card with your Google account, Chrome would previously only fetch the details at the time of transaction and required you to fill in the CVC code for the card before it did so. With the change, you'll now only need to insert the CVC code the first time you use your credit card; after that, you can use biometric forms of authentication, such as your fingerprints or facial recognition.

The feature is already on both Windows and Mac PCs and is going to be propagated to Android devices in the coming weeks. Biometric authentication in Chrome is protected using the WebAuthn W3C standard. And if you'd rather not use it, Google does offer the option to go back to manually inputting the CVC code before every transaction.

The second major change pertains to autofilling login information. The new touch-to-fill system automatically fetches all the relevant login information you've saved with Google when you open a given website. Even better, you won't need to manually click on the email and password fields or have to type them out; the browser will now pull up a sign-in dialog box with an easy-to-use UI that's conducive to one-handed use.

This feature, too, will be available on Chrome for Android in the coming weeks.

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