Why it will soon be the end of the line for barcodes after more than 50 years

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 non-profit organization that maintains the global standard for barcodes, says these will be replaced by a new square version that can store much more information about products.

Anne Godfrey, CEO of GS1 UK, said almost half of UK retailers have already updated their checkouts to the new codes.

“This has been in the works for a while, but Covid has really accelerated it,” she said. ‘During the pandemic, everyone got used to pointing their phones at QR codes in cafes and restaurants to access the menu.

‘QR codes that bring out pieces of information are already appearing more and more often on the front of many products.

‘We will soon say goodbye to the old-fashioned barcode and each product will only have one QR code with all the information you need.’

Traditional barcodes can contain only seven pieces of basic information: a product’s name, manufacturer, type, size, weight, color and, most importantly, its price.

According to GS1 (stock), QR codes appear on the front of many products

They have become so crucial to the daily operations of most supermarkets that it has become impossible to buy a product unless it has a barcode on it.

When scanned at the checkout, the number on the barcode is linked to a huge database of products to ensure customers are charged correctly.

The new QR codes contain much more information about products, such as the ingredients, any allergens they contain and even recipe suggestions, which consumers can consult via their smartphones.

Mrs Godrey said: ‘The old barcodes do what they say on the tin – they beep, tell you the price and let 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 more power to the consumer. Retailers will have to upgrade or they will be left behind.”

Barcodes were invented in the late 1940s by American science students Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver, but did not appear in stores until decades later.

The first product with a barcode ever scanned was a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum at an Ohio supermarket in 1974.

When scanned at the checkout, the number on the barcode is linked to a huge database of products to ensure customers are charged correctly (inventory)

Traditional barcodes can only contain seven pieces of basic information: a product’s name, manufacturer, type, size, weight, color and, most importantly, its price

They arrived in Britain 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 around the world.

Although simple by today’s standards, no two barcodes are the same. The lines on a barcode can be rearranged to register up to ten trillion different products.

A survey commissioned by GS1 shows that 96 percent of leading UK retail managers expect a new transformation in retail technology.

The survey also found that 46 percent of retailers have already upgraded their checkout technology to handle QR codes, and a further 52 percent will do so in the coming year.

The new GS1 codes are currently being tested in 48 countries, including at Morrisons supermarkets in Britain.

Many leading brands, including PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, L’Oréal, Amazon and US supermarket giant Walmart, are already on board.

A full international rollout of the new QR codes is expected to be completed by 2027.

Ms 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 often than Google.

“We won’t celebrate the death of the humble barcode, but it’s time to say a long goodbye to it.”