What FIDO Alliance Sees Next: Passkeys, AI Agents, and the Future of Identity?

What happens after the password dies — and who gets to define what comes next? In Episode 6 of Authentic Talks, host Arielle Slama sits down with Megan Shamas, Chief Marketing Officer of the FIDO Alliance, just as passkey adoption surpasses 5 billion credentials worldwide and OpenAI joins the Alliance to help shape the future of digital trust. Drawing on 23 years in market adoption — from EMV chip cards to FIDO2 — and as co-researcher on the new HID x FIDO Alliance Market Study, Megan brings rare clarity to what's actually happening inside enterprise passkey deployments, and what needs to happen next with AI agents, converged credentials, and agentic commerce. This episode explores the realities that few people say out loud: • 93% of enterprises are on the passkey journey — but only 13% have deployed at scale • The biggest blocker to passwordless isn't technology — it's employee communication • AI agents are moving faster than the standards designed to govern them • Converged physical and digital identity is no longer a future concept — it's overdue • The confidence paradox: organizations believe they're secure, but breaches say otherwise Chapter Guide (0:49) Welcome & introducing Megan Shamas, CMO of FIDO Alliance (2:05) Megan's background: from smart cards and EMV to passkeys — 23 years in market adoption (4:19) The Authentic Question: when did identity stop being a job and become a mission? (6:52) Unsolved identity challenges: remote IDV, deepfakes, digital wallets and global interoperability (10:51) What a successful passkey deployment actually looks like (17:32) The 93%/13% gap: why organizations aren't deploying passkeys at scale (21:06) The real blocker isn't technical — it's communication and change management (23:15) AI enters the conversation: from phishing acceleration to agentic AI (25:22) Why Megan doesn't care about "agent identity" — and what she cares about instead (27:15) Agentic commerce: consent, auditability, and the need for standardization (29:17) FIDO's response: Google, Mastercard, and OpenAI joining the Alliance (34:24) HID x FIDO research: converged credentials and the confidence paradox (41:16) Public sector lagging: fragmentation and lack of national oversight (42:33) Lightning Round: passkeys, AI agents, passwordless, and a Diet Coke fridge (48:35) Wrap-up: three key takeaways and how to find the report Featured Guests Megan Shamas — Chief Marketing Officer, FIDO Alliance Host: Arielle Slama — Director of Product Marketing, HID Related Resources → FIDO Alliance x HID Research Report Study — Converged Access: The State of Physical and Digital Identity in the Enterprise: Identity Report | HID Global → State of Passkeys 2026 Report: The-State-of-Passkeys-Global-Consumer-and-Workforce-Report-1.pdf → Follow HID IAM on LinkedIn — Stay up to date on the latest in digital identity, authentication, and enterprise security. HID - Identity and Access Management | LinkedIn #passkeys #DigitalIdentity #FIDOAlliance #Passwordless #AIAgents #AgenticAuthentication #IAM #ConvergedIdentity #IdentitySecurity