Michael Barrett cringes every time he has to enter a password on his smartphone. But six months from now Barrett says he will be able to choose from the latest Android models that will come equipped with a biometric sensor capable of letting him swipe his fingerprint to access a wide range of his online accounts. That’s the scenario being proactively pursued by the FIDO Alliance, a group of 48 tech companies, led by PayPal and Lenovo, hustling to implement a milestone technical standard. “The intention of FIDO is absolutely that it will allow consumers to have access to mobile services that they can use with very low friction, while keeping good security,” says Barrett, president of the FIDO Alliance. “That’s explicitly what we want to build.” As FIDO gains traction, it should radically change mobile computing, much as the Wi-Fi standard did.