Microsoft last week lauded the success of its efforts to convince customers to use passkeys instead of passwords, without actually quantifying that success.

The software megalith credits passkey adoption to its enrolment user experience, or UX, which owes its unspecified uptake to unavoidable passkey solicitations – sometimes referred to as “nudges.”

“We’re implementing logic that determines how often to show a nudge so as not to overwhelm users, but we don’t let them permanently opt out of passkey invitations,” explained Sangeeta Ranjit, group product manager, and Scott Bingham, principal product manager, in a blog post.

The corporation’s onboarding strategy seems to suit its corporate address: One Microsoft Way.

Ranjit and Bingham describe that strategy in a post titled “Convincing a billion users to love passkeys: UX design insights from Microsoft to boost adoption and security.” But they don’t disclose how many customers love passkeys enough to actually use them.

They do reveal that the Windows maker’s latest sign-in experience led to a 10 percent decline in password use and a 987 percent increase in passkey use. And they anticipate that given the reimagined sign-in experience, “hundreds of millions of new users will create and use passkeys over the coming months.”

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request to put a number on current passkey adoption.

It was only in May – on World Password Day no less – that Redmond made passkeys available to Microsoft consumer accounts. The biz at the time described the occasion as the culmination of a ten-year journey that began in 2015 with passwordless sign-in via Windows Hello and Windows Hello for Business.

But really the possibility of a future without passwords dates back a decade further – to 2004, when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates predicted the death of the password at the RSA Security conference. It was wishful thinking at the time – password problems led to security breaches then, as they do today – though it now appears to be within the realm of possibility.

The Fast Identity Online Alliance (FIDO) has been pursuing the same goal since 2013. With the publication of the WebAuthn authentication standard and the development of the FIDO2 Project, tech giants Apple, Google, and Microsoft gained a common means to implement passkeys. And they’ve begun doing so.