Unlocking the Physical World: QR Codes are a stop gap to NFC

For over a decade, the tech industry has built software to unlock physical objects. For New Yorkers, Zipcar was probably their first experience with tapping an RFID card against an object, a car, and unlocking the physical world. It was, and hopefully still is, a magical experience. Since then, scooter companies like Bird, Lime, Spin, Jump, Tier, Bolt and others (20+?) have brought this experience all over the world.

The pandemic popularized the QR code which is now 10+ Years old. Fred Wilson wrote a great blog post about this. But I think NFC tags are going to be even bigger than QR, which in my opinion are just a stop gap.

I recently read an article on App Clips. I think we're going to soon see a massive wave of companies using App Clips and QR/NFC to interact with physical objects.

From documentation, companies need to build AppClips as part of their native iOS application, but the end user does not need to download that application to interact with the physical object.

The marketplace of physical objects that can be unlocked is about to massively "tip," as the opportunity to not have to download an app will further reduce friction. 

The solution to having 8 transportation apps on my phone may not be 1 transportation app to rule them all, rather no transportation app at all.

“Tap” will become the next verb (Uber, Google, Venmo). Tap could become the next “It’s like ____ for ____.”

Mark my words.