Authenticate Customers with Phone Number and Integrate Twilio SMS

Businesses highly benefit from customers creating an account. It builds customer loyalty as the business can stay in touch with the customer, offering them discounts, reminding them of their abandoned cart, or offer them loyalty points.

One way to increase the likelihood of customers registering on an ecommerce website is to provide multiple authentication methods. Aside from the traditional email-password authentication, businesses can provide social login support or allow customers to login with their phone number.

Phone number authentication simplifies authentication for customers, as they don't need to remember their password. Instead, they receive a one-time password (OTP) on their phone to log in.

Medusa is a digital commerce platform that provides a Framework built for customizations. Medusa's Auth Module provides the flexibility to integrate third-party authentication services or implement custom authentication logic, such as phone number authentication. You can then use that authentication provider with any type of user, such as a customer or admin user.

In this tutorial, you'll customize the Medusa application to support authenticating customers using their phone number. You'll also integrate Twilio to send an SMS to customers with their OTP, and you'll customize the Next.js Starter Storefront to support phone number authentication.