It’s late in the day and your final task is to register for an upcoming event. An event you’re desperate to go to, with a speaker you just have to see.
Buying a ticket means registering for a new account on a platform you’ve never used before. And worse — the bane of every internet user since they were first invented in the 1960s — creating (and remembering) a new password.
The problem is that if you’re like 67 per cent of people, you’ll abandon the process completely at the first hurdle. And for the business, this is no small problem, registration abandonment can quietly halve customer acquisition.
But if you’re Graeme Speak, founder of BankVault and creator of its signature product, MasterKey, an invisible no set—up, passwordless solution, this is a golden business opportunity.
Graeme found himself in this exact situation recently. The website refused his registration because his email already existed: the password failed and the recovery loop went nowhere. Two failure points: registration and login, both causing customer abandonment.
So of course he, the CEO of a internationally respected agency, reached out to show why users were dropping off and how MasterKey eliminated both barriers.
The impact was immediate: the conversation flipped from frustration to opportunity. Suddenly, what had been a security feature revealed itself as a growth engine, capable of doubling customer acquisition and engagement.
The Password Problem
If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you won’t be surprised to hear that passwords are both a user experience disaster and a security nightmare, for users and businesses alike.
Registration and login hurdles quietly bleed away customers. Forgotten passwords, endless recovery loops, and the fatigue of constant validation drive users to abandon sign-ups, often for good.
These attacks are undetectable, and their growth is explosive
Industry studies report that 50 to 90 per cent of registrations never complete. That’s after you’ve already spent heavily to bring those users to the door. Any hiccup — a failed password reset, a mistyped code — and most simply give up.
Worse, passwords expose both users and companies. In April, news headlines across Australia reported 30,000 banking credentials stolen by Infostealer malware, lifted directly from users' own devices. These attacks are undetectable, and their growth is explosive: infections up 500 per cent in the last 12 months.
It’s easy to skim past statistics, but these should make every professional sit up and pay attention. It’s no surprise that passwordless authentication has become one of the hottest frontiers in cybersecurity.
Why Passwordless Stalled and What Broke the Deadlock
While analysts have forecast a $45B passwordless market, adoption has remained glacial — hindered by integration risks and change — management costs.
Traditional passwordless solutions take anywhere from 3 to 18 months to deploy and demand deep backend integrations, data migrations and extensive handholding users to download, install and configure software.
Most passwordless projects are a failure to launch or if they do happen, take years to land.
MasterKey breaks that deadlock. Developed by the BankVault team, it’s a true drop-in platform that eliminates these barriers entirely. It’s invisible to users because it requires no software or setup, unlocks seamless access which increases engagement, and creates Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in one frictionless step (not two).
Passwordless in minutes
BankVault isn’t some shiny new kid on the block. Backed by Turing Laureate, Whitfield Diffie (the father of internet encryption) and with 14 patents to its name, the business, established by Mr Speak in 2015, has spent a decade pioneering intelligent new approaches to web security.
Developed here in West Perth, BankVault now operates from San Francisco with a team spanning the US, Europe, and Oceania. It won Top Fintech Startup worldwide in Silicon Valley Forum’s 2016 World Cup and was named among the world’s TOP 60 Startups (the top one per cent) from 6,800 applications — selected for Singapore's SLINGSHOT 2025.
Their signature product, MasterKey, can be deployed in minutes, not months. It is invisible to users with no software or setup, and adoption spreads by osmosis. A true drop-in platform for SaaS and ecommerce, that eliminates registration and login abandonment: a breakthrough capable of doubling or even quadrupling customer acquisition.
When distribution becomes the moat
When talking about the capabilities of MasterKey, Mr Speak describes how they turned a security feature into an engine for growth.
“The primary objective for every business executive is growth. Without growth you don't have a business,” said Speak. “Password-free access doesn’t just eliminate login abandonment, it deepens engagement. The technology becomes a silent growth engine.”
Seamless user onboarding at scale elevates this technology far beyond competitors. That unique strength, when fused with massive SaaS platform marketplaces, creates the conditions for exponential growth. Each platform expands their market by millions (and sometimes hundreds of millions) of users. Competitors can’t match this velocity because they still depend on every user to download, install, and configure software.
Their vision is to establish MasterKey as the trusted default for web security. Speak predicts that the rapid adoption of MasterKey will quickly outpace competitors. This shift — enabling true mass adoption — may finally allow passwordless authentication to scale to a $45 billion market. He said the company celebrated a significant milestone in receiving a patent (its fifteenth for the product) from the US Patent Office in February 2026.
The future of authentication
The next leap in security isn’t another app, it’s removing the need for one. With the ability to deliver ‘invisible passwordless MFA’ in minutes and scales effortlessly across SaaS marketplaces to reach millions without onboarding friction, MasterKey is quietly redefining the foundation of digital growth.
In a digital economy built on logins, this is the first technology that turns authentication into a competitive advantage. The question to ask yourself, if you run your business online is simply this: is your login process a growth driver or a growth killer?
If you’re ready to drive growth — passwordless might just be the answer.
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Cecily Rawlinson is the Director of CyberWest Hub, Western Australia’s central force for advancing cyber security. The Hub is committed to strengthening the state’s cyber industry, developing a future—ready workforce, and raising cyber awareness across all sectors of the economy. For more information, you can get in touch with Cecily at director@cyberwesthub.au.
BankVault is one of many companies that exist in Perth to support companies with their cyber security and data privacy challenges.
CyberWest Hub is connected to a range of local experts — find out more at https://www.cyberwesthub.au
