> Honest question: for what reasons do you ever need to scan a random QR code?

In the past two years, due to COVID, a lot of restaurants and dining establishments got rid of paper menus and left people with "here is a QR code, scan it to see the menu". This is the most common situation I've encountered this in. It wasn't just a few restaurants that did this, it was heavy majority of places here (Seattle).

In general, assuming you have an easy-to-use QR scanner, it's easier to scan a QR code than type in a URL on a phone, especially a complicated one. A couple examples I've run into recently:

- Lately it's been pretty common for restaurants to replace their physical menus with a QR code on the table that links to their online menu.

- When I've taken COVID tests recently, the site gives me a sticker with a QR code that links to my results page.

- I encoded my wifi network/password into a QR code and printed it out, so guests can just scan it to join, rather than have to scroll and find the right network and type in a password.

They became very popular during the pandemic for restaurants to offer their menu as a scannable QR code instead of distributing and sanitizing hand-held paper menus. I think this is becoming less relevant now.

They're popular for street-level advertisements for (concerts, events, clubs, jobs) to provide a link to more information without the consumer having to type a url into the browser. This is more important if you don't want to pay for a pithy high-level domain as a landing page for the thing you are advertising.

I have also seen them for easily entering WiFi credentials to your device on a new network.

They can be used in museums to link to self-guided tour information on the artwork/exhibits you are looking at. This used to be done more with rentable/loanable walkman+headset kind of devices, but makes more sense to do on one's own mobile device now.

I print ‘three-sided cards’ that have a photo or art reproduction on one side, some documentation on the back, and more information if you scan the QR code. One series of the cards are ‘music cards’ that will play a song, another application is ‘constellations’ that let me stick anywhere from 3 to 40 cards on the wall (so far) and you can see the back sides and other narration by scanning a code.

So my use cases are (1) I am demoing the cards for people, and (2) I give the cards away for free (If it wasn’t for the supply chain crisis I’d be creating a new card design every day) or put up an installation somewhere and people interact with them. Either way I want it to be very easy for people.

In Argentina, QR codes is how you pay with your phone in super markets, pubs/bars, restaurants, everywhere - its their "apple pay", using Mercado Pago [0] app/service. Also, all the paper menus from restaurants are replaced with QR codes thanks to the pandemic.

[0] https://www.mercadopago.com.ar/

I feel like this is a US thing. The rest of the world (at least in my experience) has been quite liberal with QR codes for the past ten or so years.

You wouldn't be able to see a single menu nearly anywhere here in Mexico City without one.

Basically everywhere uses a QR code for something of importance

Lots of restaurants and bars switched to QR codes for their menus and that alone is a good enough reason to have native scanning.

I literally just scanned a couple while at the doctors - one to check in, and another provided a url of a form to fill in.

They're also in some restaurants where you can get to a menu to order from your phone.

You also scan QR codes for use in two factor authentication apps.

Covid has normalised QR code scanning in Australia - we have to do it at certain venues in order to show our vaccine passes.

My gym has a QR code with the Wi-Fi info