Signal has started testing a way to join the encrypted messenger without handing the app a phone number. The feature, branded Signal Login, is in the Android 8.28 beta and is slated for an eventual iOS release.
On a fresh install, the registration screen now includes an option to sign up without a number. Choose it, and Signal asks for a one-time in-app purchase, listed at launch as $2.99, or €3.49 including VAT. Prices can vary by country. Phone-number registration remains the default, free path.
After the payment clears, Signal issues an Account ID and a recovery key. Lead Android developer Greyson Parrelli told testers to treat those like a username and password and to store them in a password manager. “If you lose them, your account is gone,” Parrelli wrote. “There is no other recovery mechanism.”
The existence of a username at all is entirely optional. “If you choose not to add a username, your account will be completely unreachable,” Parrelli wrote. “The only chats you will be able to participate in are the ones you start yourself.”
"Good news! You don't need a phone number to use Signal anymore! Now just pay for an ID using your KYC fiat…" https://t.co/AhF3zTTC7X
— Muslim Bitcoiner⚡ (@MBitcoiner) September 16, 2026
Parrelli said the fee exists because a free, numberless signup would be a gift to spammers. “If it was free, spammers would acquire massive numbers of these accounts and ruin our network,” he wrote. “This was the most reasonable way we could think of to prevent spammers. Hopefully we chose the right price, but if these accounts somehow become a spam vector, we may have to increase the price in the future.”
The purchase uses the same zero-knowledge proofs Signal already applies to donations, so Signal’s servers can confirm that someone paid without tying that payment to the account that gets created.
This is a different problem from the one Signal tried to fix in 2024, when it added usernames so people could start a chat without showing their number to the other person. That change did not stop Signal from collecting the number during the initial signup process, which is the issue Signal Login is intended to solve.
Existing Signal accounts still cannot drop the number they already gave the service. “Not right now, but possibly in the future,” Parrelli wrote. “We’re thinking through the implications still.”
The Checkout Still Goes Through Google
You can skip handing Signal a phone number, but you cannot skip the Google-powered checkout process. On Android, the only way to buy a Signal Login is through Google Play’s billing system, which requires Play Services and a Google account with a payment method on file.
While Google does not always require a phone number to check out, it does require a Google account and a way to pay. That is enough to attach an email address and a payment record to the purchase, and many of those accounts already have a number on file anyway.
Signal can honestly say it does not learn which payment created which account; however, Google still learns that a particular Google account bought a Signal Login product at a specific time. A government could ask Signal for the Account ID activity and ask Google for the purchase tied to the same person’s Play account, then try to line up the two via timing analysis.
“If the shipping version still says Play only, the group with the strongest reason to want a numberless account, people who deliberately run degoogled Android, will be the only group that cannot get one,” a WhatJustShipped write-up of the Android code commits said.
GrapheneOS is the clearest example of WhatJustShipped’s point. The hardened Android OS, usually run on Pixel phones, is built for people who treat Google accounts and Play Services as a tracking surface they do not want on their devices. Those are exactly the kinds of users most likely to want a Signal account that never touches a phone number, but they’re currently unable to buy one (unless they’re willing to install GrapheneOS’s sandboxed Play Services workaround).
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and Monero Are the Obvious Next Payment Rails
Of course, a $3 spam tax does not have to run through Google. Bitcoin, Monero, and some other cryptocurrencies do not require an account at Google or any other trusted third party, so they could make perfect sense as the payment rails for this new feature.
Google generally requires Play-distributed apps to use Play billing for digital in-app purchases, which is a plausible reason the first version ships that way. However, that Play rule also does not apply to Signal’s own APK releases. Signal already accepts crypto donations on its website, but it has not wired those rails into Signal Login.
The more I think about it, the more saddened I am about this whole @signalapp/@MobileCoin thing. I mean sure we all saw it coming, but I was really hoping they'd end up walking away before it was too late. pic.twitter.com/iZ2BHwYwCu
— Matt Corallo 🟠 (@TheBlueMatt) April 8, 2021
In April 2021, Signal rolled out in-app payments built on MobileCoin, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. Notably, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike was a paid technical advisor to MobileCoin from 2017, and early project materials listed him on the team. Critics said Signal was steering users toward a token its founder had helped design, even before the price predictably collapsed. MobileCoin jumped from under $2 in late 2020 to an all-time high of $73.45 on April 6, 2021. It now trades around $0.07, down 99.91% from that peak, with daily volume often in the hundreds of dollars. Almost nobody uses it, including inside Signal.
In July, the team behind privacy-focused crypto wallet Cake Wallet put out a fork of Signal that integrates Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, Radar Chat.
Parrelli has said more payment methods are planned, without naming them or giving a timeline. Signal did not respond to an emailed request for comment from Gizmodo by the time of publication.
