Are QR codes still relevant?

Yes, and more so than during the pandemic peak. The difference is that usage has shifted from menus to payments, packaging and identity: UPI in India and PIX in Brazil now process billions of QR payments a month, and retail is standardising on 2D codes for point of sale by 2027.

The pandemic was not the story

QR codes were dismissed as a fad in the West around 2012, revived by contactless menus in 2020, and then quietly became infrastructure somewhere else entirely.

Payments. India's UPI and Brazil's PIX are QR-first systems handling billions of transactions a month between them. Thailand's PromptPay, Indonesia's QRIS, Malaysia's DuitNow and Singapore's PayNow are all built on the same EMVCo QR foundations. In these markets a QR code is how ordinary people pay for a cup of tea.

Packaging. GS1 Digital Link and the Sunrise 2027 initiative are moving retail point of sale to 2D codes, so one code serves both the till and the consumer. The EU Digital Product Passport is pushing regulated categories the same way.

Identity and access. Boarding passes, event tickets, two-factor enrolment, device provisioning, eSIM activation. All QR, all unglamorous, all growing.

What has declined

Restaurant menus, and rightly so in some cases — many were badly implemented, PDF-only and inaccessible. That retreat is healthy, not a signal about the format.

What killed the 2012 version

Not the format. It was the requirement for a separate scanner app, the absence of native camera support, and the practice of pointing codes at desktop websites. All three were fixed by 2018: iOS 11 added camera scanning, Android followed, and mobile-first pages became the default.

The direction of travel

The interesting question is not whether QR codes survive but what replaces the URL inside them. GS1 Digital Link makes the payload structured data rather than an opaque link, which means a scan can serve a till, a regulator, a recycler and a consumer from the same pattern. That is a bigger shift than anything that happened in 2020.

FAQ

Are QR codes dead?

No. Usage has moved from pandemic-era menus to payments, packaging and identity, and in payment terms the volumes are far larger now than they were in 2020.

Why did QR codes fail the first time?

They required a separate scanner app, phones had no native support, and codes routinely pointed at desktop websites. All three problems were solved by around 2018.

Will QR codes be replaced by NFC?

Unlikely to be replaced. NFC costs money per item and only works at a few centimetres; QR costs nothing and works at any distance a camera can resolve. They serve different situations.

What is the biggest QR code use today?

Payments. India's UPI and Brazil's PIX alone process billions of QR-initiated transactions a month, dwarfing every Western marketing use combined.