My colleague, Lucinda recently wrote a very insightful piece on the merits and pitfalls of QR codes. But I must admit I’ve never quite seen the appeal of them. For me, they just represent a bit of a hassle with little reward.
I believe their adoption is more a result of advertisers’ paranoia about driving online response from an offline medium, rather than a genuine customer desire for a short-cut means of typing a URL. There are obviously truly inspired applications of QR codes like this, but more often than not, they just feel like an afterthought – ‘why don’t we shove a QR code on the poster, that will make us look progressive’!.
This is all pretty redundant – I believe that QR codes will soon be cast off to the marketers’ scrapheap. No, the real opportunity is in Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC is short-range wireless frequency that allows transactions and data exchanges with a simple touch.
In London we’ve all been using the technology for years. The NWC chip in Oyster Cards has allowed Londoners to buy tickets and travel on public transport, while completely avoiding the typical rudeness of TfL staff – brilliant!
Google accelerated their inexorable takeover of the digital world last month with the launch of Google Wallet – an NFC application that will allow mobile payments. With this they join the global arms race to own, what will be, the next form of commerce.
However, the potential of mobile payment and social applications (imagine a group huddle on FourSquare) masks some of the more fundamental applications of NFC. You’ll be able to do anything you could do with QR codes quicker and easier!
