How to Protect Citizens Against Fraudulent QR Codes

By 2025, more than 100 million smartphone users in the US will use a QR code scanner on their mobile devices, compared to 70.6 million in 2020 ¹. But how can citizens be sure that what they are scanning is legitimate?

The steady growth in the use of smartphones to scan QR codes was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly because of the necessity to scan health passes.

Other key accelerators will come in a few years’ time. 1D linear barcodes on retail product labels will be replaced with the more data-rich 2D barcodes. And the EU’s EcoDesign for Sustainable Products Regulation will progressively implement digital product passports, in the form of 2D barcodes, across various industries. These accelerators will have the effect of drawing even more smartphone users to deploy their scanners.

Against this backdrop of potentially billions of products carrying QR or other 2D barcodes in the near future, QR code scanning will only continue to grow.