Barcodes will disappear in favor of modern QR codes.
After more than 50 years of ubiquity, the organization that oversees the world’s barcodes is preparing to consign them to the bargain bin of history.
GS1, an international nonprofit organization that maintains the global standard for barcodes, says they will be replaced by a new square version capable of storing much more information about products.
Anne Godfrey, chief executive of GS1 UK, said almost half of British retailers have already updated their checkouts to adapt to the new codes.
“This was already underway for some time, but Covid really accelerated it,” he said. ‘During the pandemic, everyone got used to pointing their phone at QR codes in pubs and restaurants to access the menu.
“Increasingly, QR codes displaying snippets of information appear on the front of many products.
“Very soon we will say goodbye to the old barcode and each product will have only a QR code that will contain all the information it needs.”
Traditional barcodes can only contain seven pieces of very basic information: a product’s name, manufacturer, type, size, weight, color and, most importantly, its price.
After more than 50 years of ubiquity, the organization that oversees the world’s barcodes is preparing to consign them to history’s bargain bin (stock)
QR codes appear on the front of many products, according to GS1 (stock)
They have become so crucial to the daily running of most supermarkets that it has become impossible to buy a product unless it has a barcode.
When scanned at checkout, the barcode number is compared to a huge product database to ensure customers are charged correctly.
The new QR codes contain much more information about products, such as their ingredients, the allergens they contain and even recipe suggestions, which consumers can access through their smartphones.
Mrs Godrey said: “The old barcodes do what they say on the tin: they beep, tell you the price and get you out of the store.”
‘But today’s consumers want much more information about the products they buy. The next generation of barcodes will give greater power to the consumer. Retailers will have to improve or be left behind.”
Barcodes were invented by American science graduates Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver in the late 1940s, but did not appear in stores until decades later.
The first barcode-scanned product was a package of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum in an Ohio supermarket in 1974.
When scanned at checkout, the barcode number is compared to a huge product database to ensure customers are charged correctly (stock)
Traditional barcodes can only contain seven very basic pieces of information: a product’s name, manufacturer, type, size, weight, color and, most importantly, its price.
They arrived in the UK in 1979 and were first used on a box of tea bags in a shop in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
Since then, GS1 has registered barcodes for more than 200 million products worldwide.
Although basic by today’s standards, no two barcodes are the same. The lines of a barcode could be rearranged to record up to ten trillion different products.
A study commissioned by GS1 found that 96 per cent of top UK retail executives expect to see another transformation of retail technology.
It also found that 46 percent of retailers have already updated their payment technology to support QR codes, and another 52 percent will do so over the next year.
The new GS1 codes are currently being trialled in 48 countries, including Morrisons supermarkets in the UK.
Many leading brands, including PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, L’Oreal, Amazon and US grocery giant Walmart, have already signed on.
The full international rollout of the new QR codes is expected to be complete by 2027.
Mrs Godfrey said: “The invention of the barcode is one of the great untold stories in the history of our modern world. It is used more frequently than Google.
“We won’t celebrate the death of the humble barcode, but it’s time to say a long goodbye.”