Chinese online retail firm Alibaba has released a brand new ‘dotless’ QR code in China, which is designed to clamp down on the rise of counterfeit goods.
Alibaba have released this new technology to combat the threat of counterfeit goods. A new report from China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOC) shows that in the second half of 2014, nearly 40 percent of Alibaba’s products the Ministry inspected were fake or illegal.
The new QR code has been developed by Israeli Offline to Online (O2O) software firm Visualead. This announcement follows up on the news in January that the software firm was entering a new partnership with the e-commerce giants.
The collaboration between the two firms has enabled Alibaba to release Visualead’s Blue Star technology. This new tool prints out a brand new QR code onto official Alibaba products.
The dotless codes require the use of a secure scanner, which comes integrated with Visualead’s software development kit. The QR codes are very different in design to the original codes.
The codes are not black and white; instead they include a colourful image, logo, or a visual call to action on 90% of the code’s surface, making them far more visually appealing and engaging to consumers.
The code can only be scanned by smartphones that have Alibaba’s Taobao application, further restricting the possibility of counterfeit goods making its way to unknowing customers.
The new technology can only be used by genuine brands. Companies have to sign up to use the new QR codes, so Alibaba and Visualead can weed out the companies attempting to sell counterfeit goods on Alibaba’s platform.
Take a look at this video released by Visualead explaining how consumers can use the brand new QR codes.
Whitepapers
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