It’s been a couple of years since Apple, Google, and Microsoft started trying to kill the password, and its demise seems more likely than ever.
The FIDO Alliance, the industry group spearheading the passkey push, is putting out some much-needed guidelines to make passkeys usage feel more consistent from one site to the next, and the big tech platforms are getting better at letting you store passkeys in your preferred password manager. Work is also underway on a protocol to let people securely switch between password managers and take all their passkeys with them.
All this is contributing to an air of inevitability for passkeys, especially as major e-commerce players such as Amazon and Shopify get on board. Even if you’re not fully attuned to the passkey movement, you’ll soon have to go out of your way to avoid it.
“Within the next three to five years, virtually every major service will offer consumers a passwordless option,” says Andrew Shikiar, the FIDO Alliance’s CEO and executive director.
