Alibaba's payments business, Alipay is among the first to deploy FIDO technology for secure payments authentication with FIDO Alliance founding member Nok Nok Labs. Committed to its mission to make it easy to do business anywhere, Alibaba can benefit those who rely on the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world with easy-to-use, secure, private FIDO authentication.

"Our many businesses and services are enriched by authentication that creates a better and more reliable user experience, as well as insightful risk management. We look forward to participating on the FIDO Alliance board, and assuring that commerce and authentication are uniquely cooperative and seamlessly compatible," said Ni Liang, Alibaba group, senior director, department of security. "With their huge local and global influence, Alibaba is a very important addition to the FIDO ecosystem and a welcome member of the FIDO Alliance board of directors. The board will benefit greatly from Alibaba's experience and influence throughout Asia," said FIDO Alliance president Michael Barrett. "Pivotal organizations, like Alibaba, can rapidly impact adoption of FIDO authentication by facilitating strong authentication for its hundreds of millions of users. We enthusiastically welcome Alibaba to the FIDO Alliance board, and we anticipate their important influence on the first industry standards for universal strong authentication: FIDO standards."

FIDO Alliance members commit to share technology and collaborate to deliver open specifications for universal strong authentication that enables FIDO-compliant authentication methods to be interoperable, more secure and private, and easier-to-use.

FIDO specifications will support a full range of authentication technologies, including biometrics such as fingerprint, eye and iris scanners, voice and facial recognition, as well as further enabling existing solutions and communications standards, such as Trusted Platform Modules (TPM), USB Security Tokens, embedded Secure Elements (eSE), Smart Cards, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and Near Field Communication (NFC). The open specifications are being designed to be extensible and to accommodate future innovation, as well as protect existing investments. FIDO specifications allow the interaction of technologies within an interoperable infrastructure, enabling authentication choice to meet the distinct needs of users and organizations.