Recently Facebook announced they will deprecate Account Kit by March, 2020.
Here is the information they posted on their official page:
“Starting in March of next year, we will no longer offer the app login product Account Kit. In order to provide our valued developers and partners with adequate time to prepare for the change, the deprecation will occur in multiple phases:
- September 9, 2019: Account Kit will stop integrating with new apps. Existing integrations will continue to function normally.
- December 9, 2019: If you’re using SMS as a means to verify phone numbers, the daily SMS limit will be reduced to a maximum of 1,000 messages per app ID per day.
- March 9, 2020: Account Kit will no longer be available for developers and partners.
- June 2020: Developers and partners will have until this date to retrieve data and information from the Facebook platform unless they initiate deletion before the deprecation, in which case their data will be retrievable for 30 days before being deleted from our system.”
Of course it’s sad news for mobile app developers who use Facebook Account Kit for mobile phone number authentication because Account Kit helps them quickly register for apps using just phone number – no password needed. It’s reliable and easy to use. And quite a cheap solution – 100 000 free SMS per month. What could be easier?
This news also upsets the ConnectyCube team, because as many other developers we also widle use Account Kit for authentication via phone number.
But, as an alternative, ConnectyCube platform has Firebase phone number authentication, which can be used for the same purpose.
The whole guide on how to create Firebase project, connect Firebase SDK and implement authentication via phone number is available at our Firebase Setup Guides:
for iOS: https://developers.connectycube.com/ios/firebase-setup-guide
for Android: https://developers.connectycube.com/android/firebase-setup-guide
for Web/JS/RN: https://developers.connectycube.com/js/firebase-setup-guide
Feel free to use it in your project.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. We are always happy to help you with the development.
