Apple and Google also pledged to use the FIDO Alliance’s standard for biometric or PIN logins as opposed to passwords.

Despite that, Microsoft is touting the move as bringing its account logins a step closer to the ultimate ideal of completely ditching passwords. "As more people enroll passkeys, the number of password authentications will continue to decline until we can eventually remove password support altogether," the announcement says.

Microsoft is once again moving closer to a passwordless future. In a bold step toward embracing passkeys – which uses cryptography to better protect data from hackers and phishing scams – new Microsoft accounts will now be passwordless by default.