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Paypal said that the devices (stock image pictured) would be powered by stomach acid and include mini computers

PayPal is developing a new generation of edible passwords which stay lodged in your stomach to let you log in.

Jonathan Leblanc, the company's top developer, said that the devices would be powered by stomach acid and include mini computers.

He said that technology had become so advanced that it allowed 'true integration with the human body'.

The next wave of passwords will be edible, ingestible or injectable and will remove the need for what he called 'antiquated' ways of confirming your identity, such as fingerprint scanning.

Typing in a password will become a thing of the past too, he added.

Mr Leblanc, the Global Head of Developer Evangelism at PayPal, said in a presentation called 'Kill All Passwords' that he wants to 'put users in charge of their own security'.

He said that passwords as they are now were not working and that users need to 'harden it with something physical behind it'.

Edible capsules could check the person's glucose levels or blood pressure before beaming out encrypted data, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Other possibilities include silicon chips which are put under the skin and 'wearable computer tattoos' which send information via a wireless connection.

A diagram of a chip used in his presentation shows a device that has sensors, a wireless transmitter, photo detectors, a power coil and a temperature sensor.

Mr Leblanc said PayPal was currently doing hackathons to develop vein recognition technologies and heartbeat recognition bands to go round a person's wrist.

But he cautioned that the company has no immediate plans to use such devices.

Jonathan Leblanc, the company's top developer, said that passwords as they are now were not working and that users need to 'harden it with something physical behind it' instead of typing it into a given computer field

Mr Leblanc said: 'I can't speculate as to what PayPal will do in the future, but we're looking at new techniques – we do have fingerprint scanning that is being worked on right now – so we're definitely looking at the identity field'.

Edible passwords would be the latest breakthrough in biometrics after it emerged that a new app lets you use your face to log in to a website instead of using a password.

True Key takes a photo of your face with the computer's camera and stores it for later use.

When you want to use a password-protected website such as your email, the app scans your face and matches it with its records - removing the need for a password.

Security experts have long bemoaned how easy it is to break passwords, not least because one of the most popular is the word 'password'.

The most widely used in 2014 was '123456' followed by 'password' and '12345678', according to one survey.

Another problem is that the average person has to remember 19 passwords but one in three said they struggled to remember them all.