PayPal: The era of online passwords comes to an end

Many companies operating in digital world are developing methods to ensure internet safety of their clients. The new methods will eliminate the use of passwords. In particular now experts actively discuss the introduction of voice recognition technology and fingerprint identification.

The payment system PayPal is one of the leading companies, which plans to introduce changes. PayPal president David Marcus said: “We want to move away from passwords, and get to embedded fingerprint scanners on mobile phones.” Such experience will be introduced later this year and a mass roll-out will come in a year.

Earlier this month, PayPal, Lenovo and other companies created a group called The Fast Identity Online Alliance (FIDO). The group is developing a standard offering a two-factor authentication scheme that can work with different kinds of identifiers, including biometric data, password protected USB-devices, built-in hardware modules that can be used by a single user to access multiple devices. FIDO’s idea is to give users an opportunity to select the type of authentication that suits them best.

PayPal decided to change the method of authentication in the payment system due to the fact that more and more people use mobile devices to purchase online, which increases the possibility of theft of their credentials.