It’s All About The User Experience And Why That Favors NFC Over QR Codes

QR codes – a visual barcode that needs to be scanned with a mobile phone’s camera — are currently used quite a bit in Asia.  Other regions of the world where smartphones are more prevalent, near field communications (NFC) appears to be the technology of choice for payment and other uses.  In fact, NFC technology is the standard enabler for tap-to-pay worldwide.

NFC is steadily rising in use.  Smartphone users can expect and receive simple, easy, “tap-and-go” functionality with their mobile phone and the world around them using NFC.

It’s all about the user experience and NFC is a superior experience in that regard.

Tap-and-go to pay for groceries.

Tap-and-go to get on the train and bus.

Tap-and-go to enable an IoT device.

Tap-and-go to unlock a car door.

Download NFC vs. QR Codes Comparison

QR codes, on the other hand, are cumbersome.  To use a QR code a person needs to open a mobile phone’s camera, point it at the QR code, scan it and hope you didn’t fumble the scan.

Compare that to NFC’s “tap-and-go”.

Here’s a comparison of QR codes to NFC.  It shows that along with speed and being easier to use, NFC also excels at readability and is more secure than QR codes.

It’s About The User

The truth is it’s really not about technology.  It’s about the user experience.  People don’t always care that the technology is called “QR” or “NFC”.  People want to “tap-and-go” and get on with their lives. People want something that is easy, simple and works.

Download NFC vs. QR Codes Comparison

Therefore, NFC is uniquely positioned to lead the market.  It is standard in the 2.87 billion smartphones in the world. More importantly it works — almost instantly, simply by holding your mobile device near an NFC reader.

Unlike other personal wireless technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, NFC technology is designed to know user intent through a tap. When used on mobile devices, nearly all now with biometric authentication, user taps with very short proximity connectivity provides a highly secure and safe user experience.  Additionally, the “tap and go” usage makes NFC one of the easiest technologies to use on devices today – and one of the fastest.

See the comparison – NFC vs. QR codes, download here.