#384 - The FIDO Alliance's Next Frontier: Digital Credentials and Wallets - podcast episode cover

#384 - The FIDO Alliance's Next Frontier: Digital Credentials and Wallets

Nov 10, 202531 minEp. 384
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Episode description

Live from Authenticate 2025, Jeff Steadman and Jim McDonald sit down with the Cal Ripken of IDAC, Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director and CEO of the FIDO Alliance. Andrew shares exciting updates on the incredible progress of Passkeys, revealing that over 3 billion are now in use securing accounts. We discuss the key themes of the conference, including the ongoing arms race with AI in security and the critical role of identity verification. Andrew also unveils the new Passkey Index, an initiative to provide industry benchmarks for deployment success. Looking ahead, the conversation shifts to the FIDO Alliance's broadening focus on digital credentials and wallets, aiming to solve the usability and certification challenges that have held the space back. Finally, we hear about the global expansion of the Authenticate conference brand, with a new event launching in Singapore.


Connect with Andrew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewshikiar/

Learn more about FIDO: https://fidoalliance.org/


Connect with us on LinkedIn:

Jim McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmcdonaldpmp/

Jeff Steadman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsteadman/

Visit the show on the web at http://idacpodcast.com


Chapter Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Introduction to Authenticate 2025 Themes

00:02:50 - Welcoming Andrew Shikiar of the FIDO Alliance

00:04:00 - Andrew's Keynote: Passkey Progress and Future Goals

00:05:17 - Over 3 Billion Passkeys in Use

00:06:57 - Improving the Passkey User Experience (UX)

00:09:02 - Introducing the Passkey Index for Benchmarking

00:10:46 - The Growth of the Authenticate Conference

00:14:55 - FIDO Alliance's New Focus: Digital Credentials and Wallets

00:17:25 - Overcoming Hurdles in Digital Credential Adoption

00:20:03 - The Role of Major Stakeholders in FIDO's Success

00:23:05 - The Future of the Authenticate Conference

00:24:00 - Announcing Authenticate APAC in Singapore

00:25:07 - Global Differences in Passkey Adoption

00:28:19 - Closing Thoughts and FIDO Feud Recap


Keywords:

Andrew Shikiar, FIDO Alliance, Passkeys, Authenticate 2025, identity verification, digital credentials, digital wallets, passwordless, WebAuthn, user experience, Passkey Index, cybersecurity, authentication, mobile driver's license, multi-factor authentication, IDAC, Identity at the Center, Jeff Steadman, Jim McDonald

Transcript

Introduction to Authenticate 2025 Themes

This is identity at the center. Welcome to the Identity of the Center podcast. I'm Jeff, and that's Jim. Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you? Not so bad yourself. Great. Look, we're here at Authenticate 2025. We'll give it away. Listen, sometimes a little slow in the uptake, but I think things are starting to come

together for me, right? We're major themes at the conference are things like, hey, the attacks are still the things they've been phishing, social engineering, things like that to get your password right now, how do we solve that? I think the answer has been pass keys, but it continues to evolve to now include identity verification. So you need this technology to solve this non-technical way

that the hackers are working. At the same time, there's also a theme where AI is playing a role not only for the good guys, but for the bad guys as well. So I think there's this AI arms race going on. I don't know. All these things are like, This is why you come to conferences, right? It's like there's the theme, there's information, you sit there and then that ticket for some point, at some point for everybody. It's just like, yeah, that aha moments. Like I get it. I think I get it.

You think you're getting it? I think I'm getting it OK. So identity verification I would say is huge, but I don't think it's just a technology because what is identity verification? It's verification of typically at least in most of these scenarios, a document and what is that document? Something government issue, right? Something that is or maybe financial institution or

education. So I think there is an opportunity for partnership here between a whole bunch of different entities to try and make this better for people. And I think that's what we're seeing in a great confidence. Well, there's a lot of attendees from a lot of different industries and verticals and technologies. And but it's not just technology vendors, it's also banks, education, I think Healthcare is here, you know, higher Ed I.

Don't know if there's. Government here, we can ask our guests of that, but I think all those need to come together to really make this something that actually takes off and really flies. Yeah, there's a lot of practitioners here, so we can see the the progress is happening already, but more and more organizations are drinking the kool-aid and saying, all right, we need to do this as

well. You know, when I think about the identity identity verification, I think where it hits home for me is we've talked a lot in the past about this unhappy fast, right? So that most of the hacks don't go through the front door. It comes down to the unlocking of a forgotten or a lost pass key for in this example, what if

Welcoming Andrew Shikiar of the FIDO Alliance

you could go back to a verified identity? You could do identity verification to unlock your passkey. Now that's horrible, yes. So I'm a fan of passkey, so I've got every time I see it, I set it up. So why don't we just, like, get into it with the man, the myth, the legend himself, Andrew Shiki are sitting across the table from us. Yeah. Executive director, executive director and CEO. I, I, I feel like I've been butchering your title for a long time because this you've been on

as long as you. Have it you? Can call me whatever you want 10 Times Now like. 10 times I'm really here just to pad my league. And and you are doing a fine job on my I, I was talking to Jim yesterday during your keynote and say, all right, we got to wait, do something for and go, we go. On this is play, I appreciate this. If I keep having my lead, I don't know if I'm like the Cal Ripken of Inac or LeBron. I'm near as athletic or, you know, as strong as you're those guys.

But I'm I, I take pride in this, this record and I do intend to keep it. Well, it's definitely a career highlight as far as I'm. Concerned. There's that. It is. Why don't we start with where we're at, right. The authenticate this 2021, one of my favorites of the year and

Andrew's Keynote: Passkey Progress and Future Goals

it's been a great conference so far. But I'm curious before we get to that, like you, you I well, let's let's get into that as well. But yeah, your keynote yesterday. Yeah, it was it was a little bit of kind of making everything. It was like, all right, here's where we've been and then here's where we're going. Yeah, we start with kind of I. Tried to have a narrative, yeah. Right, right. That's like those are summary, right?

Well, first. I mean, let's talk about the elephant in the room, I answered to her. Yes, I. Got AI, got a good. Chuckle up, kid. Yeah. So that was. The and we're using Max, so I've been told you're not a massive. I mean, it's all, it's all there. So I'm open minded and changing,

evolving through the years. Yeah. So it's great to have an opportunity to kind of help set up the the vision for we're heading as an alliance for the next, you know, next year or so. I talked about where we're coming or what we've done and where we're coming from and where we're going. So the first message was around Passkey in progress with Passkey's. The fact of the matter is, I mean, Jeff, I love what you

said. Like when you see a pass key, you, you, you enroll, you use it, you love them. And I do too. And I, I mentioned I still get a thrill every time I see like the pass key, like signing, like I love it. And I love the fact that when I meet random people, like on the golf course or something, that's what I do. I can actually say, ever use a pass key? Like, yeah, of course I have. And then that's what I do, you know. So is there something like so tangible about it?

And the progress is so real that it, that it's fantastic. So the past couple years we've got these counting statistics

Over 3 Billion Passkeys in Use

like, well, we estimate, you know, 4 billion in total accounts can use pass keys and the 7 billion and the 10 billion and it says, you know, we can't do that anymore because the the rollouts are so grown and we know the big brands are doing this. But there's no point, you know, quantifying the total, you know, number of accounts that could use it. What I did share is that we estimate over 3 billion actual pass keys are being used to secure accounts. That's a big 3 billion in three

years, less than three years. That's fantastic progress. OK, so we're really happy with that progress. But we also realized that like our job's far from done like I might firmly believe that, you know, passkeys are inevitable, right for consumer sign in. We will look back at passwords as a thing as a relic, right as as a as a Rotary phone. It'll take a while to get there. We want to make sure that we stay on that path to inevitability.

And so we have work to do That's what I've talked about things we need to improve on. One is on US improvements.

I talked about making sure that, you know, passkeys are fully capable and effective in the enterprise for workforce and these are things we'll work on. And the last thing I talked about was a need for practitioners to really contemplate the broader security picture, not just for signing, which is where you know, passes are closing the front door to attackers, but also they're removing knowledge based credentials for recovery. All right.

So if you if you have, there's a reason why a lot of companies keep passwords around with pass uses. You know, it's very complex to get rid of them all together, but you're putting them further and further in the corner, further and further in the background is what we need to do to lead their ultimate demise. Because as long as they're like readily accessible for recovery, there is a back door that's open to attackers, right? So that's another imperative we

Improving the Passkey User Experience (UX)

have for 2026. So we're going to push on all those things as we look to, you know, see more and more adoption, better adoption, better deployments that with passkeys in the market. I find interesting that you mentioned the user experience for passkeys. I feel like it's already pretty good. Yeah. And you bought and you you've spent a lot of time and I've ever building out the Fido standards for the user experience and you have a whole bunch of documentation. Yeah.

What is? So when you say make it better like what do you mean? Well, so I mean it's, it depends on your pass key experience, but the fact of the matter is that every pass key experience needs to be an excellent experience, full stop. And often times you don't sign in through the front door, right? Not everyone enters a website through the front. There's a lot of adjacencies where you enter, say an Amazon or a PayPal or some of these flows are not always for the

front door. They come in different ways. There's a lot of things to contemplate on how someone comes to sign it. There's also surprisingly large amount of combinations of browsers and operating systems and devices where there's still some inconsistencies. There's some UX flows that are inconsistent with security keys and things like that. So like we're aware of these and it's a, you know, top priority is to identify them, figure out how to solve them and, and to solve them.

And I, I appreciate the fact that you think it's a good experience and you know that we've done good work on this, but there's always, you know, always work to be done. Yeah, that's user experience to me is a lot about ubiquity and consistency. I like as you go from place to place pass keys everywhere, but if they do it differently then that's going to automatically confuse people. Yeah, choosers, right. So then the fact of the matter is you can enroll multiple pass keys for a service.

And I often do this. All right, so I live a very heterogeneous life. I'll be on honorable passkey on my iPhone. I'll do one on my windows, you know, for Windows Hello, and I'll do one for my third party credential manager. And sometimes, you know, the the site doesn't know what to present it with. All right, so there's things we can, you know, improve on that. And I think again, it's all attainable.

And I think it's always important to bear in mind, we've been at this for only a couple of years and we're seeing great progress. And and these are, you know what I'll call lower case G, lower case P, growing things, all

Introducing the Passkey Index for Benchmarking

right, feel really good about the progress, but there's always work to be done you. Just need a better way theme music right for the wrong bands? So we talked about, we talked about progress in that front, but the other question we get, so not just counting statistics, but qualitative statistics.

So we introduced the past the index you mentioned that this is in response to really a desire for benchmarks and I talked to companies a lot who are deploying and they might be early in the rollout like hey Andrew, look we have a you know say 35% enrolling rate. Is that good? You know, our, we've cut our signings, you know, time by, you know, 75%. Is that good? You know, I'm not making those numbers up, but like, how do you quantify these things, right? It's kind of like a stick in the

space. If there's no, you know no context around it, how do you know how you're doing? It feels better, but yeah. You know, but the fuel is important, but you know, quantitative data is even better, right. So we're starting to be one start providing benchmarks in the industry. So we, we launched a passkey in this, which is an initiative comprised of Fido member relying parties, you know, major service providers who have had rollouts in market for a bit.

And it's only, it's a small in. So it's only 9 companies contributed to this, but we took their, an average of their aggregate data, right? So nothing's depended, you know, directly to a company, but you know, each company's average signed a success rate and time to sign in and a number of metrics. We boiled that down into, you know, some benchmarks that people can be aware of and shoot for. All right.

And so this is our our first step of this initiative and we intend to, you know, let this grow over time, both as a service to the industry to let people know what they should shoot for, but also as a benefits of members, right? So I think that generally, you know, members who contribute data to this can get data out of it. There's a lot of data that we held back from publishing.

The Growth of the Authenticate Conference

So we want to make sure that you know, our our community at large. We're also our membership community has what they need to be successful, but they're past year olds. Yeah, that's really cool. And he's talked about the passkey index this week. We're here at the conference authenticate 2025. Tell us about it. How's it going so? Far I've been thrilled, you know, so we have more people than ever. I think we have around 750 on site maybe which is I think we're around 6:50 last year.

So you know, nice growth and number of attendees. We have a lot of people attending remotely as well. We're one of the few conferences that still offer a fully remote attendee Which. Is great, fully support that. Which is great. So hey, look, if you just want to get the content, you know, attend remotely and if you can't travel, attend remotely also, you can get the content. We archive all the content, make it available first to people who do register and pay. So, you know, we're very

cognizant of that as well. But the people on site get the whole benefit of being part of the community. And it sounds like such a cliche and kind of cheesy, but there is something pretty special here. And you mentioned this before, like there is a real sense of community here and people are here to help each other. And like, if you are interested in authentication and pass keys, like we're not going to find more capable, smarter people that are going to find here in

our halls. And the content is fantastic with the hallway con is always a highlight, right? Seeing people connecting, you know, seeing someone who gets to talk about their deployment, spend like half an hour talking to people, have questions about it. You know, there's this real sense of goodwill and, and, and, you know, urgency to help each other be successful that really permeates, you know, the whole event here. So I think it's been a good event and numbers a couple of

their data points. I think the, and Jimmy mentioned this, there's a bigger practitioner audience here than years past. And we saw this kind of anecdotally as the registrations came in, but I'm hearing it from our vendor hall that they're having, you know, more, you know, interesting conversations with people who are further along their deployment, their their purchasing journey, very, you know, have very poignant questions about how to roll out,

you know, Fido infrastructure. So you know, more of a practitioner audience. And generally, you know, conversations has gotten more and more up level while also leaving room for new attendees. So I think we have around 45% new attendees this year, right? That doesn't mean they're new to pass keys means they're new attendees. But you know, people have all skill sets who are coming here to learn to advance their deployments and then move forward as well. So been really happy on that

front with the show so far. Yeah, I wrote the practitioners. That's the one thing I'd say I felt that is the most different from past years. Yeah, like a. Whole bunch of people who are new to the conference. In the beginning of the show, I kind of tried to think out loud about what I'm kind of holding all these pieces together to paint the picture of what authenticates all about how close did I come? What would you change? But I think you hit it on the head.

I mean, so it's, it's about, you know, well, the name of the show is authenticate. So it's about authentication. I mean, it's at its core, it's about authentication. So I want to talk about what we're doing next, next. So it's a place to learn about all things authentication with a focus on the Fido approach. I think that's our our mission statement. And so no matter where you are in your pass key journey, your authentication journey, you're going to learn something here, right?

You're going to learn something by listening to practitioners give case studies. We're going to learn about different use cases. We're going to learn about futures. You're going to learn about adjacencies, you're going to learn about authorization and new standards and payments and agentic AI and all these things that are, you know, you need to authenticate first to sign into things to take advantage of this. But these are all the things we're covering.

You know, one thing we've changed through the years and some of the feedback we got last year is like, OK, I get it, pass. These are great, but I don't need case study after case study saying like passkeys are amazing. So we actually got more selective. It's not just like a, a cheerleading session. We turned down some amazing case studies that would have been fantastic. But like we can only do so much of like I use passkeys, I save

money as you know. So there's only so much that we could do. So we try to get sharper with some of the angles looking up. People are coming back a second time talking about what's happened, you know, on stage 2 of their deployment. So you know, we've evolved the kind of message we have around this as our audience has matured

FIDO Alliance's New Focus: Digital Credentials and Wallets

also. And then the other key theme we're seeing here are the adjacencies. So part of my keynote that you mentioned is Jeff, I talked about like where we've come from and where we're heading. I guess kind of the headline here is that we are, you know, intentionally kind of broadening our focus to look at digital

credentials. And so we've been focused on like the broader identity life cycle for a couple years now, but their IDV certificate, identity verification certification, which allows for like what Jim was talking about for possession based onboarding and recovery and, you know, certifying products against that. But the digital credentials and wallet space is an area where you've got a lot of feedbacks at where we could probably add some

value. All right, I think everyone can understand the value and the vision of digital credentials for like literally your wallet, your physical wallet is digitized like no different than like right now, you do mobile payments, that's a digitization of your, of your credit card, but why not your identity and your passport and your diploma and your fishing license, whatever else you need to have digitized is all there, right And accessible to you, rooted

in, you know, a trusted, you know, proof of real world identity that allows you to, to leverage this in a, in a very nimble, you know, efficient fashion. So everyone's had this vision for literally for decades. We have governments, we have pushing on this to happen. You know, a lot of states have mobile driver's licenses here in the United States, more famously than Europe. You know, the European Union is pushing every member state to have digital wallets by the end of 2026.

So what's been holding us back is not, you know, vision or ambition, but what's been holding it back, I think is, you know, there there's things that we could do to unlock this, right? And then I think that's what we're focused on doing is bringing the three things that Fido Alliance does and does very well into this space.

You know, we do as an alliance, you know, we create technical specifications, we run marketing and enablement programs, and we run a certification program that really unlocks the value of open standards. So you think about passkeys, right? We have CTAP and web auth N we certified products against those B to B products people can deploy against and enablement. And that was a passkey moment. All right, So like web auth and five O 2 existed before

passkey's. But when we came up with the passkey, you know, the brand, the logo program, the user guidelines, all of a sudden they gave a name and some commonality to what people have been doing. And it really spurred all the growth that we've been seeing that with passkey's. So we've been talking to major issuers, digital credentials, major consumers, digital credentials about, you know, what do they see hold the market back?

Overcoming Hurdles in Digital Credential Adoption

And and yeah, we think there's opportunity for us to provide value there alongside partner organizations like Open ID Foundation and ISO. So you mentioned Europe and Jim and I were at the EIC conference in Berlin. Yeah. Earlier this year. Great. Conference, what struck me is how far ahead they are when it comes to digitalization of their credentials. So you mentioned, you know, the the EU and a member nations need to have something in place.

One of the things I learned there was there's actually a financial implication if they don't do it, it's some sort of fine or tax or something that, you know, the country has to pay if they don't do it. By that time I was like, OK, well, that's that's one way to get people motivated. I don't know if that works, right. Yeah, I don't know how that would work in the US because we see the fragmentation with mobile drivers license, for

example. So trying to get, you know, 50 States and territories plus territories, right, to try and get on the same path I think everyone wants. To do that, like what? Do you see as holding back like that specific theory? Is it just that the politics and or is it something else? No, I think. It's the one thing we want to look at doing is providing some sort of wallet certification, right? And so there's different protocols out.

There's ISO protocol, there's Openty foundation protocol, We have a protocol that can be used for, you know, credential presentation across devices. These are all things that can be used for as, as part of a wallet. And I think that there's a lack of, we feel like there's a value to be added like by by launching A certification program, you know, for wallets, for the wallet providers and for the

relying parties as well. And that's the type of thing that could start to kind of help catalyze the space a little bit to help move things forward. So wallets are one area. I think there's also like no one's focused on usability, not

enough folks on usability. There's been some great work like on the, on the US front, like the mobile driver's license front, you know, STA Secure Technology Alliance has done some really good kind of sessions on talking about NBL use cases, how there's been some inner OPS that have happened. But it's, it's, you know, it's part part, you know, pieces here, pieces there. And I think that, you know, final lines brings to the tables, right, sort of

stakeholders to work with. Companies like that, organizations like that just bring greater focus on the enablement aspects of of making digital credentials a reality, you know, throughout the world. Feels like you had some early adopters. I know the one company, I know it's not their full name, but Docomo, you know, if they, they were the early adopters, then you had a lot of big tech adoption where basically all the platforms bought in on on this

passkey process. To me, like that's the the head

The Role of Major Stakeholders in FIDO's Success

of Steam that needs to get around everything. But now that you're at that point, it seems like it's just going to roll. Yeah, absolutely. With Pat. I mean, I feel like we're making really good progress with Passkey's and it's the set of stakeholders that we have in the alliance that helps makes this happen. I think we're, you know, incredibly unique in the sense that we're very fortunate to have a broad set of organizations, right.

So all the major platforms, the device manufacturers, leaders and identity and you know, security technology governments or members of Fido Alliance. And then last but not least, like the service providers who need Fido to succeed, right. And then they've really driven a lot of the use cases and driven a lot of the adoption of passkeys in the market. And so then we as a life, you know, look at what we've done and we've also done other work also like in credential exchange

powder device on board. So we've proven that we can execute on passkeys, but also, you know, adjacent spaces. So as our stakeholders got together, you know, then they talk about what what you know, where are some other common pain points. You know, one of them was around digital credentials, right? And they feel like, you know, they like collaborating inside a fighter alliance.

We want to be more collaboration and that's really they're the ones really pushing for us to take on this very important work and we will take on this work and we'll execute against that. Do you think that for this to move forward, you still need to continue to have the major players like Google, Apple, Microsoft, right? They when those three died involved with pass keys, that was like, OK, now we're getting somewhere. Is it similar for wallets?

Obviously Apple Pay is huge. You've got Samsung wallet, you've got Android wallet. I don't think Microsoft has a wallet. And so much infrastructure actually. So Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung Paytal, Visa, MasterCard, anti to Docomo, different mobile operators. And in Korea we have SK Telecom. Yeah, well, so like, literally. Like, right. If you forget one, then we'll yeah, yeah.

There's a lot we have a lot of, but like really those are the the types of companies that have a very vested interest in, in seeing this space. A lock. Right. And, and, and it's a never as interest to see this space mature and, and happen, You know, this stands to increase commerce and reduce fraud, right? And so I think one of the biggest challenges that like payment networks have, or, you know, payment companies like a PayPal is, is fraud, right?

And also they want to be wallet, they can beat wallet providers. So they're supposed kind of cost savings and financial opportunity with digital credentials. And so, you know, to be clear, these companies wants to do this, you know, not, you know, yes, it's for the sake of society, but it's for their benefit as well. And that's, that's the whole point of standards, right? Standards are not all about altruism.

It's about, you know, basically deciding like, hey, look, we're going to commoditize a certain level of technology and compete on top of that so that we can all be more efficient in in how we invest our R&D and how we compete and how we deliver better services to the world at large. And that's what standards are about.

That's what Fido's about. And that's where that's where we're doing pass keys that that will aim to do with our partners in the ecosystem with Wallace and credentials. That predictability is a big, big part of this, right? Is here's what to expect. You know it's going to be this

The Future of the Authenticate Conference

format or whatever, right process, and having the ability to count on that is such a big part of the experience. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So the conference is called the Fennecate. Yes. Now we're moving into identity verification. Are we keeping the name authenticate or are we going to try to come up with something new like how's that going to? Work. Yeah, we, we don't, we don't have plans to change the name authenticate, but I think. Oh, you don't have the domain name right, So.

But. But I think that, you know, it's important for us to get the word out as we plan for next year's show that we'll be talking about authenticate and more authentication and more. And actually, if you look at the agenda this year, there's a lot of good content on visual credentials, on agentic AI, on payments, on automotive, right? So other things, again, authentication is the front door for a lot of these things. Passkeys are a front door for a

lot of these things. But also there are other applications, other use cases and full, full adjacencies to passkeys that we will address. And we'll want to get the word out to people that if you want to talk about those things, you

Announcing Authenticate APAC in Singapore

know, authenticate's a great place to come to talk about them with the experts. So you've got other conferences as well, right? So this is the one that's in Carlsbad. Yes, there's one in Asia. I think that's going to take one. Yes. Well, we are announcing this week, so will have been announced by the time this airs that we are launching authenticate APEC in Singapore in June of 2026, I think June 2nd through 4th.

Double check those dates before you book travel Tuesday through Thursday in Singapore. Yeah. So we're very excited to expand the brand into Asia. In 2023 and 2024. We had something called the Fido EPAC Summit. The first one is hosted in Vietnam, the next one in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Both are fantastic events, kind of regional events.

We had probably 3-4 hundred people attend both of those, which is very inspiring to see, you know, traveling halfway around the world to see people who are super interested to learn about Fido and how to deploy Fido and how to deploy pass keys. So we're basically just kind of extending the Fido and the Authenticate brand into that activity, tying into our member meeting that happens at the same

Global Differences in Passkey Adoption

time in Singapore next year. So we're very excited to kind of take that next step at this conference and with our broader Fido community. So last question is this, what do you notice as a is the biggest difference between the US audience when it comes to fight alliance and pass keys and not any verification versus audiences in other parts of the world you've had these conversations like do you notice anything different? But the audiences? Yeah. I mean more like is their

interest in different spots? Are they having different messages? Like what's the? Yeah, I don't. It's hard. To generalize, you know, like you said, like in Europe for example, and lots tied to digital identity, like what can I do like closer to kind of government oriented applications. Although you know, I talked to the good folks from Abalka, you know, the Spanish bank, they were here this week and you know, they're expanding their

pass key rollout. So a lot of the same consumer applications are happening, you know, in Europe as are happening here, but it's probably more of a kind of regulatory lean in Asia, you know, there may be some more mobile first type experiences and Southeast Asia has some more emerging country emerging opportunities. But we were down in Australia this year in February in like Australia, just like, you know, on the bleeding edge of a passkey adoption.

All right. So like U Bank, which is the subsidiary of NAB, A&Z Bank, you know, are also committing to or supporting passkeys. Now there's conversation today from Vicroads, which is like the equivalent of the state of Victoria's DMV about how they've moved to like they're moving towards 80% adoption of passkeys. So if the adoption in Australia is phenomenal. So long answer short, it's hard to generalize, but the good news is we're seeing adoption go all over the place.

And the one area that we've yet to really engage with where there's a lot of activities in Brazil, right? So to take part in the open banking, open finance activity in Brazil, you need to have a Fido 2 certified server. So there are dozens of banks in Brazil that are now Fido

certified. Every mobile payment there is using the passkey or a body mobile payment, I shouldn't say every, a lot of mobile payments they are using passkeys, just pay as a new member of Fight Alliance, they're driving a lot of that work along with Visa in Brazil. So there's a lot of activity in South America as well.

So look, I think what we've done as an alliance with our stakeholders is, you know, put great technology out to market, you know, make it available to people, building in devices that everyone can use. And as a result, you know, we collectively are starting to address the password problem, which has really plagued the role for decades, decades. Yeah. Really. Literally. Yeah, like. Yes, it's a very dawn of. Time, yeah.

Yeah. And The thing is like we've been aware of the the challenge for you know, 20 something years, which is when the MFA first started coming out, right. And the answer has always been like how to make passwords Sup less with more, more layers. And that's that's a good short term answer was as we know that's not sustainable. So passkeys are a password replacement. And you know, the reason we're seeing adoption at the scale we're seeing it is because they work, they provide returns.

And again, that's where we're starting to quantify with the passkey index. We're trying to reinforce that was shows like this with things like Passkey Central to help

Closing Thoughts and FIDO Feud Recap

companies and organizations move their passkey implementations forward so that ultimately you know, this is all you know in in the name of, of creating a safer Internet. It's been an amazing ride for the last few years and I, I just want to say thank you for your support of this show. You know, had it been on so many times. I know you're a busy guy, so trying to carve out time for you with this type of thing is always fun. We did Fido feud you did last night.

It ended in a tie. I'm not sure how to feel about it yet. The guarantees to repeat for. I kind of think it was fixed. We certainly can't cut fight a few now. Right now has to come back because there's a tie, you know, so. We have to come up with like Brandy for it. I'm I'm already kind of leaning to fight a feud, fight a feud 2026, the rematch of the rematch. Oh well, there's something like rematch, but your your team has been great to work with. Give a shout out to Adrian.

She was awesome with all time and she she manned the sound effects. So I don't think by the time this episode goes like people won't have that as an episode, but we'll help to get that out by the end of the year. But it was so much fun. So thank you for. Letting us we have a great team of Fido Alliance and I couldn't think more highly my colleagues. It's really an honor to work with them. Also, everyone's very passionate about what we do. We believe what we're doing.

You know, ask everyone who works with us to, you know, first of all, sign up to believe in the mission and be missionary about it. And everyone is. And so we take a lot of pride in what we do. And I think it shows here at the show and everything that the the Fido team does, it's. Been great. So we'll go ahead and leave it there. I think for this week, idcpodcast.com, idcpodcast.tv for the YouTube and the all that good stuff.

So like and subscribe. Let's bring back Andrew for 11 probably in a couple months and yeah, we'll leave it there. So thanks everyone for watching and are listening. Andrew, thank you for your time. Thanks guys. And we'll talk with everyone in the next one. You've been listening to Identity at the Center. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review, and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the website at identity@thecenter.com.

See you next time on Identity at the Center.

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