Olivier Tshimbidi, Chief Information Officer, Pax Africana Advisory

TheTakeOffInterview| We talk QR (Quick Response) Codes, what exactly are they and are they safe? Think before you scan QR (Quick Response) codes are actually two-dimensional barcodes that were initially developed for the automotive industry back in 1994 to expand the capabilities of standard barcodes. Although they were designed to provide a lot more detail when scanned, the QR codes that you’ll encounter as a consumer are nothing more than a quick way to represent a complicated web link. It’s much quicker to shoot the code with your smartphone than it would be to type in a long string of characters to get to a specific web page, which is why they’ve become so popular. QR codes are, by design, incredibly user-friendly. These days, we see them everywhere. They are on the back of consumer products, and we can scan them to get more information. They are in restaurants so we can scan them to view the menu without touching a physical menu card. They are used to enter competitions, in children’s books to access online content. They are also used by various apps to allow small business vendors to accept credit card payments. Guest: Olivier Tshimbidi, Chief Information Officer, Pax Africana Advisory   Pax Advisory is a cutting edge data and technology-driven Pan African management consultancy firm with a business philosophy that is deeply rooted in the African intellectual tradition driven by the pursuit for contextual solutions to problems confronting Africans on the African continent.