A quicker shop as barcodes near end of shelf life

Invisible codes to replace black lines in ‘five to 10 years’ and cut queues

BARCODES will disappear from supermarkets in as little as five years, experts have predicted, as international retailers with UK branches are in talks to adopt new technology for tills.

New “invisible” barcodes printed over the entire surface area of packs are replacing black straight-line bar codes in the US, and are soon to make their way to the UK.

Digimarc, a US firm that provides invisible barcodes, said they could come to Britain this year.

The company said a number of retailers with UK stores were in talks to introduce the technology.

The new barcodes will reduce queuing times for selfservice checkouts by making items much easier to scan.

Instead of searching for a barcode and lining it up with the scanner, shoppers will be able to place the item near the scanner at any angle for it to be read.

Traditional barcodes can fail to scan if they are placed on a damaged or creased surface, badly printed, or if they are partially covered in frost because the item has been in a freezer. When barcodes fail, shoppers must wait for an assistant to enter a numeric code from the pack manually, slowing down the process and creating longer queues for shoppers.

Mark Thompson, a director at Zebra, the retail payments specialist, said he believed that, within five to 10 years, there would be no traditional barcodes in UK supermarkets. He said: “This technology is coming very soon in the UK and it will really take the hassle out of self-service checkouts. I believe that in five to 10 years, barcodes in their current form will be gone in supermarkets.

“It is expensive to install but it speeds up the shopping process and therefore makes supermarkets’ business much more efficient, therefore saving them money in the long run.”

Digimarc’s invisible barcodes are already being used in two grocery stores in the US: New Seasons Market and Wegmans, which has 90 stores across six states.

A spokesman for Digimarc said: “We are starting out in the US and in Europe we will come to Germany first but we anticipate coming to the UK some time this year.

“We are in discussions with a number of international retailers with branches in the UK. Our starting price is £50 per product per year and each product costs £350 to enhance for Digimarc.

“Stores which have been early adopters have found they have reached efficiency within one to two years of installing Digimarc.”

Invisible barcodes also let shoppers scan items using their mobile devices more easily, either to pay or to get additional product information, such as where ingredients are sourced.