Forget the 'Forgot Password?'

Maybe I’m suffering from a time warp but I've been living in this world for a long time: 

1. Outlook, BlackBerry, Android Mail and other apps that have been around for ages don’t need users to enter a password every time they check their email.
2. Fingerprint-scanner equipped smartphones that can unlock themselves without passwords have been around for a while now.
3. Employees have been tapping their chip-embedded ID cards on RFID readers to enter their offices for over 10 years. They’ve also been using physical ID cards to prove their identity with third parties e.g. merchants who offer discounts for employees of certain companies (but not others). It’s technically possible for an NFC-equipped smartphone to replace cards but how would that support the current multipurpose nature of physical cards?

Agree with your point Ketharaman. 

What I am trying to contend here that if the world adopts one technology which is highly secure and linked to biometrics/something unique to the person, then there's high probability that the world we see might change significantly.

Only fingerprints as a biometric identity is not secure enough. So, the advent of ECG and palm vein scanners opens for us a new area where compromising with security will be difficult.

Just wonder, only one device used as an identity to enter your office, unlock your car, log in to your e-mails and so on. Passwords will be a part of history then.

Good authentication already exists.  For example, Google Account has relatively simple 2-factor authentication that works.  Biometrics suppliers, in their enthusiasm, talk about offering the user a significant improvement in speed, conveniance and effectiveness.  The promise of all of these methods is that they will eliminate passwords and PINs and make life frictionless.

But isn't the real benefit of better authentication in it's actual application?  If merchants, web site owners and service providers the world over can't be bothered to implement better authentication now, why are they going to do so in the future?  The real benefits must be delivered be to those participants not just the users.  Namely, quick and easy integration, fast authentication, and all at a low, low price!

@ParamdeepS:

If I had a penny for everytime I read "passwords will be history", I'd be a three-time millionaire - with the first and second million coming from "cash will be history" and "plastic (credit cards) will be history" respectively!

Jokes apart, using only one device for accessing everything sounds ideal but it's neither desirable nor practical. Not desirable because it goes against the basic principle of security, which dictates that things with different degree of sensitivity must be secured by access control mechanisms of different strengths. Not practical because, even if we somehow hand out such devices to everyone, the cost of installing readers everywhere to read those devices is simply too prohibitive. I was alluding to this in my comment about NFC-smartphone-employee-ID not fulfilling all purposes to which physical cards are put to today. Similarly, while Aadhar cards may be issued to >500M Indians, I haven't come across a single Aadhar card reader that can scan fingerprints to authenticate an Aadhar card holder.    

I'm intrigued when you say fingerprint is "not secure enough". If that's the fate of the outcome of decades of work, there's little hope for newfangled - and somewhat harebrained  - biometric 'factors' like EKG / hearbeat (https://www.finextra.com/community/members/PreviewDComment.aspx?dc_id=12081).

Without having to go to the expense of resorting to biometrics there is a highly secure 2 factor authentication from a London based start-up that does away completely with username and password instead relying on a simple 4 digit PIN, launched either from a browser (HTML5) or from a mobile app (though for a bank this can be embedded into their own app and launched on opening). Authentication is performed between the Client and the Authentication Server using the app Protocol, a zero knowledge proof construct. The result is that the server has just one leakproof cryptographic key, which if compromised or stolen reveals nothing about users in an enterprise or your web application. 

In addition, the software operates on a principle of distributed trust, whereby the root key generators are split between the proprietor´s servers and those belonging to the client, meaning that any attack would have to compromise both of these systems to have any chance of being successful. 

Apart from the ease of use and deployment as well as the added security, another major point of interest is that its use can reduce authentication costs by up to 93%! Security does not have to be expensive.