Amazon is introducing a new QR-code-based augmented reality (AR) experience to help bring interactive and shared experiences for a mobile user, according to Apple’s App Store listing.
The way the app works, the store listing says, is for one to download the app, point the camera at a QR code on an Amazon box and “immerse yourself in augmented reality.”
According to the listing, the augmented reality feature is “a fun way to reuse your Amazon boxes until you’re ready to drop them in the recycling bin.”
The app will access a user’s camera to digitally render content and create illusions of products and objects in the physical environment.
According to the company, users whose devices support TrueDevice technology will let the camera track facial movements to allow some features like “selfie mode,” the release says. Amazon says that any information is stored solely on the user’s device and is not used by Amazon for any other purpose.
QR codes have been booming since the pandemic started earlier this year, with the form of payment becoming so ingrained in some cultures that Chinese panhandlers have begun asking passersby for QR code scans in replacement for cash as ways to buy things, PYMNTS reports.
But the form of payment hasn’t been wholly adopted in the U.S. thus far, with the country’s mobile providers like Apple having mostly avoided the idea. And Americans’ interest in payments seems to be content with cards and had not been looking for updates to that format.
That said, the coronavirus pandemic has shifted people’s preferences toward more digital forms of payment, PYMNTS writes, and American shoppers might be fine with sticking with digital payments for the near future.
Around 57 percent of consumers in a recent survey said they pick where to shop based on the payment operations offered, with contactless payments becoming of particular note during the pandemic.
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