Just to clarify, there is not a 100% secure method to send any kind of data with Ajax, or even a normal POST.
A good practice is to use SSL/TLS Certificates, if you have a good SSL/TLS certificate nobody can sniff out the password from observing your network traffic.
Unfortunately these services are not free. (*)
If you don't want to pay for something like that and you're building a Sign Up / Log In you can simply use OpenAuth or OpenID and let people join using Social Networks avoiding many security steps both Client and Server side.
*: As suggested by Ivan Venediktov, you can now get a free SSL certificate by following this LINK.