When you enter a restaurant and ask for the menu, it is likely that you are told to scan a QR code with your phone to display and order food and drinks – no necessary paper menu. Likewise, many people now scan a QR code daily to buy fish and vegetables in a local store. From the pandemic, QR codes have appeared everywhere: on payment applications, coconut water carts and even display panels. They have become a signature of our digital life, especially in India. But have you ever wondered where does this pixelisted black and white square come from?
The story begins in Japan. It was in 1994 and Masahiro Hara, who worked in Denso Wave, a Toyota The Car-Party subsidiary had the idea of creating the QR code. Hara, an advance in the manufacture of the automobile, played the old strategy game that goes to work when he noticed the layout of black and white stones on the table. The concept of placing black and white points on a grid triggered the idea behind the QR code, which means “quick response code”.
Before the QR codes
In the early 1990s, the digitization of barcode was not new – it was already used in Japan and other parts of the world. Barcode Technology was patented for the first time in 1949 by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver. Their patent described the basic structure of the use of lines of lines to represent the numbers – a method still used today. Interestingly, the first barcode did not include vertical lines at all; Instead, he used a series of concentric circles.
Bar codes had been used to follow the parts, but the system was ineffective. (Image credit: Denso wave)
Woodland and Silver initially found it difficult to interest companies in their invention. But that changed in the 1960s, when the engineer and physicist Theodore H Maiman built the first functional laser, which quickly decodes the line models of a barcode. The first official bar codes quickly started to be adopted in certain industries. However, a major problem has emerged: various stores in the United States have launched barcode pilot projects using very different types of barcode symbols.
At the end of the 1960s, the United States grocery stores faced challenges such as the increase in labor costs and stocking difficulties. Bar codes were considered the ideal solution to automate the process – but only if all members of the industry have agreed to use the same symbol. To remedy this, the industry trained an ad hoc committee in the early 1970s to develop a feasible barcode system. This committee created the universal product code (UPC), which was designed to be compatible with different types of barcode symbols.
Hara and her team have essentially transformed a one -dimensional barcode into a compact two -dimensional grid that could be read quickly – QR means “quick response”. (Image credit: Denso wave)
The committee then had to choose a standard symbol. They invited the submissions of various companies, reduced the list to seven finalists and, after three years of deliberation, chose IBMDesign. The IBM symbol has become synonymous with the word “barcode”. He became the industry standard and the very first UPC barcode was scanned in a grocery store in Troy, Ohio, June 26, 1974.
Limitations of bars codes
Hara knew that the standard UPC barcode was far from perfect and had several limits. These bar codes were unidimensional, coding for information horizontally through the width and spacing of the vertical lines. A major problem was that if part of the barcode was torn or damaged, the machine could not read it. Another limitation was that each barcode could only contain 20 data characters.
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The renaissance credit of QR codes goes to China.
At that time in Japan, the automotive industry passed through a transition phase. Hara had received workers’ requests in the field to develop a better way to scan stocks. A single box of components often transported up to 10 bar codes which were to be analyzed individually. There was a clear need for a less with a high intensity of workforce to store more information.
Hara wanted to change that. He and his team decided to solve the problem by creating a “better barcode” which could effectively follow cars and car parts during manufacturing. Hara finally found the concept of the QR code, which could decode up to 10 times faster than its predecessors and store around 7,000 characters.
He developed a two-dimensional barcode in the form of a square, which addressed the question of limited data capacity. However, Hara faced early challenges with the new 2D barcode design. When the bar codes were printed next to other texts, the scanning machines have often failed to detect them, which makes codes with square bar underlying. One day, while looking through a metro window on its way to work, Hara noticed how the skyscrapers distinctly stood out of the surrounding landscape. This observation helped him find a way to ensure that square bar codes are visually distinguished from the text. After a lot of iterations, he had the idea of incorporating three small squares – each with a specific black / white ratio – to the corners of the barcode. This design worked and the scanners could recognize and read the code, whatever its orientation. Not only that, the QR code designed by Hara could still be read even if it was stamped or partially damaged.
ISO certification
Part of the reason why QR technology was working so well was that its two -dimensional design allowed more data to access by optical scanners at any time. The code could also be scanned from various angles and distances. This was particularly useful on the mounting lines and worked well for the parts of the machine – many of which had unique and different shapes.
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A QR code is characterized by a two -dimensional pattern of square and white square points. (Image credit: Denso wave)
Since Hara worked for a manufacturer of car components, the QR code was originally designed by thinking of the automotive industry. The main automaker in Japan, Toyota, has shown its interest in the Hara QR code and adopted it in its factories – a testimony to the potential of technology and its ability to improve the efficiency of the manufacturing process. But it was the beginning of something much bigger. Even Hara could not have predicted that her invention would not only transform industries but also create entirely new segments and markets.
The QR codes have started to be widely adopted when Hara’s employer, Denso Wave, made technology freely accessible to the public without charging license fees, despite the detention of patents. A new wave of adoption began when the QR code received ISO certification in Japan in 2000, and technology began to find its way in daily life.
New lease
In 2012, many began to wonder if QR technology had died or if it still had life. Companies did not use QR codes as largely as initially planned. In fact, QR codes were even called “dead”. However, in China, the QR code found a new breath, thanks to the boom of smartphones that had started in the country. The QR codes have started to be used to make mobile payments, access key services, claim discounts and allow the creation of new applications and entirely new services. WeChat is an excellent example of how the application has used QR codes and has created new services and features around them.
One of the main advantages of the QR code is their large data storage capacities. (Image credit: NPCI)
As smartphones gained popularity, companies have found new ways to take advantage of telephone cameras, making the QR code an underlying technology behind many popular and general public applications and services. What had been successfully implemented in China in the early 2010s was then introduced elsewhere, including in India, at the height of the pandemic. Local companies have started to adopt QR codes, allowing users to just scan them with their phone camera to access a new service or a new website. However, what many had not planned in India was how QR codes could introduce digital payments to more than a billion people.
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UPI revolution
With the launch of the Unified Payments (UPI) interface, an infrastructure created by the highest payment processor in the country, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), mobile applications built on UPI infrastructure could safely access several bank accounts and merger of services such as digital payments and funds for peers in real time. Today, UPI is one of the most dominant digital payment methods in India. UPI transactions reached Rs 24.77 Billions of value and 19.78 billion volumes in March 2025, which shows how payments without species using QR codes have made its way to India.
India takes advantage of without cash payments, thanks to UPI.
Yes, QR codes are everywhere, but ironically, Japan – where the QR code has been invented – was left behind. In Japan, money is still king and the country always warms up to the idea of payments without species and QR codes. Consumers and businesses hesitate to change, even if other countries are already about to become companies without species. However, COVID-19 (female has led to a thrust towards contactless solutions, including QR codes in Japan. The government has also started to promote initiatives without species by offering incentives to businesses and consumers.