The barcode is dying, and QR codes are taking over everything you buy
Barcodes are about to go extinct
GS1 is pushing retailers to replace the 50-year-old barcode with QR codes by 2027. The shift promises richer product data—origin, allergens, disposal—but demands new scanners, databases, and packaging. Walmart, Costco, and Target are already moving, leaving suppliers to scramble. As one packaging expert puts it, it feels like a meteorite is hitting the planet and no one is paying attention.
People don’t like change, and they don’t like change that’s going to cost money. No one is talking about it. It feels like a meteorite is hitting the planet and no one is paying attention.
- delichon
> No one is talking about it. It feels like a meteorite is hitting the planet and no one is paying attention.
An unintentionally appropriate metaphor. How many of the ~17 meteorites that hit the planet per day do you pay attention to?
- sschueller
GS1 Datamatrix is what I see here locally (Switzerland) starting being used for fresh food like sandwiches which makes sense as it contains the sell by date. This allows them to quickly scan items and sort out what has expired or needs a discount because it's expiring soon.
Sadly food tracking apps still don't read these codes. They are vibe coding new features constantly but not working on adding what is actually important.
Yazio, im talking to you...
- max-ch
I work for a global consumer goods company - we print probably billions of (1d) bar codes on packs per year.
1d bar codes will go extinct, but only after every scanning system at every retailer has changed to recognize 2d bar codes/qr codes. This will likely take decades.
In the meantime, there will be a world where 2d bar codes and 1d bar codes will coexist on packs. With the additional confusion that many packs already have qr codes, either for consumer information or for internal tracking at the plant (batches for quality control), so we will probably have a little zoo of qr codes for a while, until they all finally can be merged.
- jimnotgym
Prediction.... 'about to', will mean over the next fewdecades. Retail product barcodes may be the fastest to go, over the next 2 decades. Other uses, like self printed labels for warehouse stock control will be here for the foreseeable. You might install a new Manufacturing Execution System in 20 years that supports it. But the Warehouse Management System and ERP don't...
- byte-sized-snac
They mention QR code being a link and companies having to store data on their side.
Surely the actual data will be stored in the QR code and available offline
- JuniperMesos
I'm glad to see this. Switching to a new standard barcode format that can hold more data and enable better tracking of physical consumer goods seems like the sort of thing that will have a large number of small benefits pervasively in the economy, one of the many small improvements of human technological civilization that in the aggregate results in a better world today than in the past.
I also like the aesthetics of QR codes better than traditional barcodes. They do kind of invoke the look of a Go board partway through a game, which is more visually interesting than the boring straight lines of the traditional barcode.
- pards
Does encoding URLs in QR codes expose the scanners to quishing[0] attacks, such as bad actors sticking malicious QR codes over legit ones?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing#QR_code_phishing_(qui...
- newswangerd
This is very similar to IPv6. Sure, the new standard solves a lot of problems, but it also has to fight decades worth of existing infrastructure.