Although our world nowadays mainly revolves around digitalization, we at ANY strongly believe that both physical and digital documents have their place but must work together to ensure full degree of digital accessibility. In this booming digital era, our goal in the last two years was to revolutionize document verification simply by using a smartphone.

The most logical decision was to build on the QR code standard, which commonly used solution can be scanned by practically every smartphone found on the market today and is a familiar-looking data carrier for end-users. By extending the regular QR code’s capabilities and creating the VLQR code we managed to implement access control where the code’s public layer may be scanned by any kind of scanner, but the hidden layers of these special 2D codes may be accessed and decrypted only by our dedicated reading algorithm capable to work even inside a simple Web Browser as a PWA (Progressive Web Application), still carrying out the code reading process offline. Besides protecting the personalisation data printed on a document, supported by further internal developments and cooperation with several technological partners we managed to extend its functionalities even more. As an example the VLQR code may be complemented with additional variable (graphical) security elements printed on different parts of the documents or even it is capable to incorporate a biometric face or fingerprint template in an extremely small size of 128 bytes to support biometric document holder verification.

At this point it became clear that this security element may be a good candidate to replace the built in chip in documents where they are not necessarily needed or to extend traditional documents with similar level of authentication possibilities in a cost effective way. The only unsolved challenge remained to determine if the scanned code was an original, or a photocopy. This technical obstacle led us to think about combining the Origify technology developed by Bosch with our VLQR code in a unique way. Origify offers an innovative approach to document authentication by capturing a unique optical pattern of each document, creating an immutable record of authenticity. This digital pattern, stored securely in the cloud as a binary file, can be verified instantly using a smartphone app. Leveraging the inherent microscopic variations present in almost every product and document but invisible to the human eye, Origify provides unparalleled security against counterfeiting. This eliminates the vulnerabilities associated with traditional security measures, such as easily replicated codes, labels or detachable tags. Additionally, the solution requires no physical modifications, preserving the object’s integrity and aesthetics. Origify is also versatile, applicable to a wide range of materials and can also be linked to secure unique codes like ANY’s VLQR code. By offering a reliable and scalable solution for document authentication, Origify contributes to a more secure digital future, which makes the solution an ideal candidate for addressing the critical questions posed by ODDS 2025, such as ensuring higher levels of security and exploring the coexistence of physical and digital documents.