QR Code Usage by Country: Statistics and Global Adoption Trends (2026)

QR Code usage statistics show steady growth worldwide. Industry forecasts project the global QR Code market will more than double from USD 15.23 billion in 2026 to USD 33.14 billion by 2031. What started as a pandemic-era convenience is now everyday infrastructure that connects print, packaging, payments, and mobile experiences.

Usage still looks different from country to country. Asia leads in QR Code payments, while North America and Europe lean more heavily into marketing, menus, and product packaging. Those differences matter when you plan campaigns, choose destinations, and decide where a scan should send someone next.

If you are new to the format, start with an explanation of how QR Codes work and assess whether they are still relevant. This guide gathers current QR Code usage statistics on adoption, market size, demographics, payments, and regional trends. Use it to see where the technology is headed and how to put it to work.

Key Takeaways

• QR Code adoption is now mainstream and continues to grow. Industry forecasts project the global market will reach USD 33.14 billion by 2031, a 16.82% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
• Scanning is a monthly habit for most US consumers. 70% of US consumers scan a QR Code at least once a month, and 71% call QR Codes useful in daily life.
• Asia leads QR Code payments. India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) handles roughly 49% of the world’s real-time payment transactions by volume, and merchant-displayed QR Codes carry a large share of that traffic.
• Dynamic QR Codes dominate. They account for roughly 65% of QR Code market revenue. These codes let you edit destinations after printing and track scans.
• Security now shapes adoption. Microsoft recorded a 146% rise in QR Code phishing in the first quarter of 2026. Brand your codes and verify destinations to protect users as “quishing” scams rise.

Global QR Code usage statistics and market size

QR Code usage is expanding worldwide. Widespread mobile internet access and everyday habits formed during the pandemic continue to drive that growth. The market numbers show sustained demand, not a temporary spike.

A note on that eMarketer figure: it is a forecast published in 2023, not a measured count of users in 2026. There is no authoritative global census of QR Code scanning, because scans are spread across payment networks, private systems, websites, apps, and QR platforms.

These figures show both market scale and everyday behavior. A market on track to more than double by 2031 is not waiting for a comeback story. Businesses that treat QR Codes as durable infrastructure can plan campaigns that stay useful long after the first print run.

Adoption also looks different depending on what you measure. Market value tracks software, payments, and commercial deployments. Consumer surveys track whether people actually scan. Both signals point the same way: QR Codes are mainstream, and growth continues after the first pandemic wave.

The composition of that growth is shifting, though. Payments still hold the largest share of revenue, but Mordor Intelligence expects marketing and advertising to grow the fastest through 2031, at an 18.16% CAGR, driven by offline-to-online attribution and personalized campaigns. If you work in marketing, that is the segment you are competing in.

For planning, use the market-size data to justify investment and the consumer data to shape the experience. A large market only helps you if the scan is easy, the destination is useful, and the code still works when the campaign changes. Dynamic QR Codes and clear branding do that practical work behind the headline statistics.

How COVID-19 changed QR Code usage

COVID-19 accelerated QR Code adoption, and the evidence suggests the behavior outlasted the restrictions. Mordor Intelligence attributes current market momentum in part to “contactless payment habits formed during pandemic recovery”, now reinforced by regulation rather than public-health rules.

You can see that staying power in post-pandemic consumer data. 70% of US consumers now scan at least monthly, and 47% say their scanning habits have not changed year over year, suggesting a settled routine rather than a fading novelty. The global market remains on a double-digit growth path through 2031.

The durable use cases are the practical ones. Payment systems kept merchant QR Codes at the counter. Retailers kept packaging codes, and regulation is now pushing more onto packaging rather than fewer. Many restaurants retained digital menus, often alongside print menus rather than replacing them, since QR-only menus proved less popular in full-service dining than in quick-service.

What changed permanently is the shortcut itself. Once people learned that a camera scan could replace a typed web address, the behavior generalized to contexts unrelated to hygiene. Businesses kept the codes because they lowered friction and made content easier to update.

For more on that trajectory, read Are QR Codes dead?

Who uses QR Codes: Demographics and behavior

QR Code users skew younger, but usage is broad across age groups and everyday contexts. Restaurant menus, product details, and apps drive most of the day-to-day demand.

The most current US consumer picture comes from Uniqode’s State of QR Codes 2026, published in March 2026 and based on 524 US marketers, 1,000 US consumers, and more than 188 million analyzed scans:

• 70% of consumers scan a QR Code at least once a month
• 71% say QR Codes are useful in their daily lives
• 75% scan primarily to get more information, ahead of discounts (52%) and payments (35%)
• Almost 60% are confident QR Codes are safe to scan, and more than 25% trust them more than they did a year ago

Generational detail comes from an earlier TEAM LEWIS survey of 1,000 US adults, fielded 26 February to 1 March 2024 and census-balanced across age, race, gender, and region. The fieldwork is now two years old, so treat it as a baseline rather than a current reading:

• 68% of all US adults, 83% of Gen Z, and 81% of Millennials used a QR Code in the past year
• About half of each group scanned weekly (Gen Z 49%, Millennials 51%)
• Top reasons people scanned: 48% restaurant menus, 47% app downloads, 43% product information

The two datasets agree on the important point. Younger shoppers scan most often, but the use cases themselves are ordinary. People want the menu, the app, or the product details without typing a web address.

Buying intent follows the same pattern. 79% of shoppers are more likely to purchase a product with a scannable barcode or QR Code, according to a 2024 GS1 US consumer survey. That finding carries an important condition: it holds when the code provides the information they want.

Execution is where most programs lose that intent. Uniqode found that 36% of consumers have experienced a scan that failed, 29% have encountered a dead link, and 27% have waited through a slow-loading page. A clean code that opens the right page builds confidence. A vague code that leads to a broken or slow page wastes the intent the scan has already proven.

There is also a content mismatch worth fixing. Three-quarters of consumers scan for information, but only 36% of marketers use QR Codes to deliver additional information. Matching the destination to why people actually scan is the cheapest available improvement.

Demographics help you prioritize creative and placement. If your audience skews younger, frequent scanning is already a habit, so focus on speed and mobile clarity. If your audience is broader, lead with a plain benefit on the print piece. Labels like “Scan for the menu” or “Scan for product details” help first-time scanners know what to expect.

QR Code usage by country and region

QR Code adoption is now global, but the pace and primary use case differ sharply by region. Asia leads in payments. North America and Europe lead in marketing and packaging. Country-level payment systems shape those patterns more than novelty does.

The Bitly figures come from The State of QR Code Scans in 2026, published in March 2026, but the percentages measure the change from 2024 to 2025 on Bitly’s own platform. They are not market-wide volumes, and they did not happen during 2026. Pair them with independent market research when you need category-level sizing.

Asia-Pacific is the revenue anchor. Mordor Intelligence reports that the region delivered37.59% of global QR Code revenue in 2025 and lists it as both the largest and fastest-growing market, projected to compound at 18.16% through 2031. Bitly’s platform data shows a21% increase in scan rate across the region. Interoperable payment rails and high smartphone use keep QR Codes at the center of daily transactions.

India is the clearest national-scale proof point. India’s UPI handles roughly 49% of global real-time payment transaction volume, a figure the PIB attributes to International Monetary Fund analysis published in 2025 using 2024 data. Annual UPI value reached approximately ₹314 lakh crore in FY 2025–26 across more than 24,162 crore transactions.

Now, 49% is a share of transaction count, not value, and real-time payments is a broader category than QR payments: PIB reports that person-to-merchant transactions account for 63% of UPI volume, with the remainder largely person-to-person transfers that may not involve a merchant code. Merchant-displayed QR Codes remain at the center of the merchant side of that system, and PIB reports 56.86 crore QR Codes deployed to roughly 6.5 crore merchants as of FY 2024–25. In that market, a scan is often the checkout itself.

China treats QR-based mobile payments as everyday infrastructure. Mordor Intelligence describes Alipay and WeChat Pay as normalizing QR checkout for hundreds of millions of shoppers, and Ant Group expanded Alipay-plus QR acceptance to 95 markets in January 2026.

Near-field communication (NFC) is starting to take a share of low-value transactions that used to run on QR. Mordor lists tap-to-pay cannibalization of low-value QR payments as an active restraint on the market, most acute in North America, Europe, and high-income Asia-Pacific. QR remains cheaper for micro-merchants without terminals, which is why it holds firm across much of Asia and South America. But “QR is the default forever” is not a safe assumption for planning in mature card markets.

Brazil and Latin America show fast engagement growth. Bitly reports a 40% increase in scan rate in Latin America from 2024 to 2025. Brazil’s PIX instant-payment system is the engine: Brazil’s central bank reported 6.3 billion PIX transactions in March 2025, with 41% initiated through QR Codes. Merchant payments now account for the larger share of PIX activity, with person-to-business overtaking person-to-person in 2026. In high-engagement markets like these, QR Codes often act as the front door to the digital experience rather than a secondary option.

Europe posted the largest regional scan-rate increase in Bitly’s dataset at 42%. Businesses there use QR Codes heavily for menus, campaigns, events, and packaging. Regulation is adding to that: EU Regulation 2024/1781 requires machine-readable carriers, explicitly including QR Codes, on batteries, textiles, and electronics by 2027 under the Digital Product Passport mandate.

North America is slower but steady. Bitly reports an 8% increase in scan rate. That fits a mature market where brands win by improving placement and post-scan experiences instead of simply printing more codes. Compliance is a quiet driver here, too: US FDA DSCSA serialization requirements require two-dimensional barcodes on pharmaceutical units, and that infrastructure spills over into adjacent use cases.

Use the table as a planning filter. In payment-led markets, make the destination fast and transactional. In marketing-led markets, make the creative worth scanning and the landing page worth the effort. In either case, measure scan performance so you can improve placement rather than guess.

QR Code payments around the world

QR Code payments are the largest single application of QR Codes in terms of revenue. Payments and transactions made up 45.19% of QR Code market revenue in 2025. That is why national payment rails matter so much in any usage story.

When nearly half of market revenue runs through payments, country-level payment systems become a core component of QR Code usage statistics. India shows what national scale looks like, and its reliance on merchant QR Codes makes it a clear public example of QR Code payments in daily commerce.

A small business can put a code on the counter and accept payment without a complex terminal setup. Mordor Intelligence notes that QR remains cheaper for micro-merchants lacking terminals, especially across Asia and South America. That accessibility explains much of why QR Code payments travel so far in high-volume markets.

China reinforces the same pattern through Alipay and WeChat Pay, where a countertop code is often enough to complete a purchase. Wallet apps, personal transfers, and in-store checkout all reinforce the same scanning habit.

Brazil’s PIX extends the trend in Latin America. With 41% of its 6.3 billion March 2025 transactions initiated by QR Code, PIX gives people a reason to scan repeatedly, unlike a one-time campaign code on a poster. If you want to apply the same idea in your own business, start with our guide to digital payment QR Codes.

The business takeaway is not that every market should copy UPI or PIX. It is that payments create repeat scanning, and repeat scanning trains people to trust QR Codes in other contexts. Once customers are comfortable paying by scanning, they are more likely to scan a menu, a package, or a poster without hesitation.

QR Code trends shaping 2026 and beyond

Three trends define QR Code usage now. Dynamic QR Codes dominate, security has become a condition of adoption, and QR Codes are becoming a first-party data channel on packaging and in retail (data you collect directly from your audience).

Each trend changes how you should create and manage codes. Together they explain why QR Code usage statistics in 2026 read less like a fad report and more like an operating manual for offline-to-online growth.

Dynamic QR Codes lead the market

Dynamic QR Codes accounted for 64.92% of QR Code format revenue in 2025 and are forecast to widen that lead at a 17.27% CAGR to 2031. They lead because they let you edit destinations after printing and track scans. Static QR Codes still work for permanent destinations. Dynamic QR Codes give you campaign control after the print run leaves the shop.

That editability is why marketers prefer dynamic formats for promotions, seasonal offers, and multi-location campaigns. You can fix a broken link, swap a seasonal offer, or route different audiences without reprinting every asset. Mordor also notes a practical compliance benefit: dynamic codes simplify GDPR erasure requests in a way static codes cannot.

Compare the trade-offs in our guide to static vs dynamic QR Codes. Explore Dynamic URL QR Codes. Then use QR Code analytics to measure what happens after each scan.

QR Code security and ‘quishing’

Quishing is QR Code phishing. It reaches people through two distinct channels, and most coverage only describes one of them.

The physical version is the one people picture: a scammer pastes a counterfeit sticker over a legitimate code on a parking meter or restaurant table, redirecting the scan to a credential-harvesting page. Mordor Intelligence reports that security vendors logged a fivefold rise in these overlay attacks.

The digital version is larger by volume. Attackers embed QR Codes in phishing emails, usually in a PDF attachment, because a QR Code is an image and most email gateways are built to parse text. Microsoft Threat Intelligence tracked QR Code phishing rising from 7.6 million attacks in January 2026 to 18.7 million in March, a 146% increase and the fastest-growing email attack vector of the quarter. PDF attachments carried 70% of those attacks by March.

That distinction matters because it changes the advice. Checking a printed code for tampering does nothing about a QR Code that arrives in your inbox.

Protect your audience with a few practical habits:

• Verify the destination web address (URL) before you enter information or complete a payment
• Check printed codes for stickers, overlays, or other tampering
• Treat QR Codes in unexpected emails and PDF attachments with the same suspicion as an unexpected link
• Prefer branded QR Codes from trusted businesses so the code looks intentional

Branding does measurable work here. Survey data on QR trust puts content previews (48%), verified branding (42%), and official logos (38%) at the top of factors that make people confident enough to scan. Branded codes make your campaign look professional and give people a visual cue that the code belongs where it appears. For a deeper walkthrough, read our quishing and QR Code security guide.

Retail packaging and the GS1 transition

Twenty of the world’s largest companies, including Procter & Gamble, L’Oréal, and Nestlé, have signed a global joint statement calling for adoption of next-generation barcodes on product packaging (GS1 US, 2024). GS1 is the global standards body that administers UPC barcodes and product data standards.

The 2027 date attached to this shift is part of a separate GS1 initiative called Sunrise 2027. Under it, retailers work toward point-of-sale systems that can scan and process 2D barcodes, including QR Codes carrying GS1 Digital Link data, by the end of 2027. It is a scanning-capability target, not a deadline for the disappearance of UPC barcodes. Most brands are dual-marking packaging with both symbols during the transition, and UPC codes will continue to be accepted after 2027.

Shopper demand supports the move. 79% of shoppers are more likely to purchase a product with a scannable barcode or QR Code that provides the information they want, and 77% say product information is important when making a purchase.

When packaging can convey ingredients, sustainability details, instructions, or offers with a single scan, the code becomes part of the product experience rather than an optional extra.

How businesses use QR Codes by industry

QR Code adoption is broad across industries. Mordor Intelligence segments the market into payments and transactions, marketing and advertising, information sharing, and customer engagement and loyalty. The best programs match the code to a job the customer already wants to finish.

• Restaurants and hospitality: Menus, ordering, and payments; see contactless solutions for restaurants
• Retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) packaging: Product details, sustainability data, and post-purchase content
• Logistics and supply chain: Tracking, handoffs, and item-level information
• Pharmaceuticals: Unit-level serialization under US FDA DSCSA requirements, now reused for bedside verification
• Marketing and events: Campaign landing pages, ticket flows, and measurable offline-to-online paths

Where marketers actually place codes, according to Uniqode’s 2026 survey: Social media (64%), digital ads (60%), printed materials (50%), and product packaging (42%). A majority (60%) plan to increase usage further.

Industry use cases mirror the regional data. Hospitality and retail lean on convenience. Payments markets lean on checkout speed. Marketing teams lean on attribution, while logistics teams lean on accuracy at every handoff.

Across all of them, the winning move is the same: give the scan a clear job and a mobile-friendly destination. Ask what action should happen in the next 10 seconds after someone notices the code. If the answer is “open the menu,” “pay now,” “see ingredients,” or “claim the offer,” the code has a job.

Some 56% of marketers expect QR Codes to drive higher revenue, but only 12% currently measure their impact on revenue. Choosing a Dynamic QR Code lets you update destinations and measure performance without reprinting every asset, turning a simple scan into a repeatable channel.

Put QR Code data to work for your business

QR Code usage is growing worldwide. Adoption runs deepest where payments and packaging create daily habits. Regional patterns still matter, so match your offer to local behavior rather than copying a single global playbook.

Dynamic, branded codes give you the tracking and trust today’s users expect. Start with one clear use case, measure the scans, and improve the destination until the code earns a regular place in your customer journey.

Ready to join the businesses putting these trends to work? Create your first Dynamic QR Code with QRCG today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people use QR Codes?

QR Code usage is mainstream, though no authoritative global count exists, because scans are distributed across payment networks, private systems, websites, apps, and QR platforms. In the US, 70% of consumers scan a QR Code at least monthly, and eMarketer forecasts that 102.6 million US consumers would use smartphone QR scanners in 2026. Globally, the QR Code market is on track to reach USD 33.14 billion by 2031.

Which countries use QR Codes the most?

Asia leads the world in QR Code usage, driven by payments. India’s UPI handles roughly 49% of global real-time payment transactions by volume, with merchant QR Codes central to its person-to-merchant traffic. China relies on QR-based mobile wallets for everyday purchases, and Brazil’s PIX had 41% of its March 2025 transactions initiated by QR Code. Europe and North America use QR Codes extensively for marketing, retail, and product packaging rather than for payments.

Are QR Codes still growing after COVID-19?

Yes. The pandemic accelerated adoption, and usage continued to climb afterward as contactless menus, payments, and check-ins became normal habits. Market forecasts show double-digit annual growth through 2031, and 70% of US consumers now scan at least once a month.

Who uses QR Codes the most by age group?

Younger consumers use QR Codes the most. In a TEAM LEWIS survey of 1,000 US adults fielded in early 2024, 83% of Gen Z and 81% of Millennials had scanned a QR Code in the past year, against 68% of all US adults. About half of each younger group scanned at least once a week. Usage spans older age groups too, especially for payments and menus.

What is a Dynamic QR Code, and why do businesses prefer it?

A Dynamic QR Code stores a short redirect link instead of fixed data. You can edit the destination after printing and track every scan. Businesses prefer Dynamic QR Codes for exactly these reasons, which is why they hold roughly 65% of QR Code format revenue. Learn more in our guide to static vs dynamic QR Codes.

Are QR Codes safe to scan?

A QR Code cannot carry malware on its own. The risk comes from its defining feature: the destination stays hidden until you scan, which is precisely what scammers exploit. Attacks are rising on both fronts, with Microsoft recording a 146% increase in QR Code phishing in the first quarter of 2026 and Mordor Intelligence reporting a fivefold rise in physical overlay attacks.

Verify the destination URL before you act. Check printed codes for tampering or stickers, treat codes arriving by email or PDF with the same suspicion as an unexpected link, and favor branded codes from trusted sources. Our QR Code security guide covers how to stay protected.