The Matrix, Decoded

QR code, the little pixelated square, has changed how India pays or accesses information. Its applications are only limited by imagination

- SHELLEY SINGH

New Delhi, 18 August Last month, a video shared on Instagram showing a quick-response (QR) code embedded on a tombstone at a cemetery in Kerala went viral. Upon scanning the code, a website pops up, directing to a page that provides information about the person, including what he did, and family details of the deceased!

That may not have been the application QR code's Japanese founder had in mind when he was looking for a better alternative to barcodes in manufacturing setups. But today, if there is a ubiquitous face of the digital world, it could well be a pixelated one: the QR code. On roadside stalls, payment gateways, airline boarding passes, restaurant menus, product packaging, newspaper ads, and a host of other things, the small black-and-white square (a standard QR code is square, though there are also rectangular versions) has become a universal gateway to payment, information, and interaction. And its use cases are only expanding.

The rise of the QR code has been dramatic. Affordable smartphones, cheap mobile data and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have made it a default way of sending and receiving money for all kinds of merchants, online and offline. Beyond payment transactions, hospitals and diagnostic centers have started using QR codes to manage patient data. In colleges, students can scan these codes for assignments. And across companies, it could soon become the way to mark attendance.

The beginnings The QR code's origin dates back to 1994, when Japanese engineer Masahiro Hara was looking for a better alternative to barcodes to track auto parts at Denso Wave, the auto company he worked at. Barcodes could only store limited information and had to be scanned in one direction.

Hara came up with a two-dimensional matrix, which could store over 4,000 characters, be scanned from any angle, and withstand damage, thanks to an in-built error-correction technology.