A HUGE change may be on the way for supermarket checkouts as a shopping feature is set to be axed from all products.
Barcodes have been synonymous with shopping for more than 50 years but they may be having their last dance.
GS1, the international non-profit organisation that oversees the world’s barcodes, has said the more than 50-year-old method of scanning is set to be replaced by QR codes.
Anne Godfrey, chief executive of GS1 UK, said almost half of British retailers have already updated their tills to accommodate the new codes.
She described how the Covid pandemic accelerated the adoption of QR codes across retailers, which could hold more information for shoppers.
The chief executive added that during this time, the public became used to using these newer codes in pubs and restaurants to access menus and other pieces of information.
She said: “Very soon we will say goodbye to the old-fashioned barcode and every product will just have one QR code that holds all the information you need.”
Traditional barcodes are limited to holding just seven pieces of basic information – a product’s name, manufacturer, type, size, weight, colour, and its price.
When these barcodes are scanned at tills, their number is matched to an enormous database of products to make sure that customers are charged correctly.
However, new QR codes contain far more information about products including their ingredients and allergens, for example.
Consumers may even be able to access recipe suggestions from scanning a QR code on an item.
Anne said consumers today want “much more” information about products they purchase, rather than just the simplicity of the barcode.
She added that these new codes will give more power to consumers, and that retailers will “have to upgrade or get left behind.”
Despite being invented in the late 1940s, barcodes didn’t appear in shops until decades later.
The first product ever scanned was a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum in an Ohio supermarket in the US in 1974.
They later landed in the UK in 1979, featuring first on a teabag box in a shop in Spalding, Lincolnshire.
Since then, GS1 has registered the barcodes for more than 200 million products globally.
A standard 13-digit barcode can be formed in ten trillion ways, which would be enough for everyone on Earth to invent more than 1,200 different products, each with a unique code.
This comes as a study commissioned by GS1 found 96 per cent of leading UK retail executives expect to see another technological transformation to their industry.
Already, 46 per cent of retailers have upgraded their checkout technology to allow for QR codes, with another 52 per cent aiming to do so over the coming year.
GS1 has its new codes currently in testing in 48 countries, including in the UK at Morrisons supermarkets.
Consumer giants such as PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, L’Oreal, Amazon and US grocery giant Walmart are already on board, with a full international roll-out of the new codes expected to be complete by 2027.
Anne described the barcode’s invention as one of the “great, untold stories” of the modern world, adding that it’s used more than Google every day.
She added: “We won’t celebrate the death of the humble barcode, but it is time to say a long goodbye to it.”
