On the 5th of March 2025, Channel News Asia reports: “Foreigners from 63 countries, territories can use QR code clearance to enter Malaysia from next year”.
“QR code clearance – which is a form of passport-free travel – allows travellers to clear immigration in around five seconds, said Malaysia Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.”
Hi, my name is Terence, I’m your host for the Daily Monsoon, a podcast where I connect current events to matters of faith. For today, I am a technology pundit.
I found it fascinating how the article highlights QR code as the solution to the immigration check point efficiency. Unless you have hiding in an underground nuclear bunker for the past 10 years, you know what a QR code is.
In Malaysia, it really took off among the general public during Covid, when the MySejahtera app used QR codes for contract tracing.
Now, it is used everywhere. Posters have QR codes. You use your phone to scan it and you get a voucher, or fill survey, or watch a video. The QR code can send you wherever you need to go.
It’s also used in banking apps. At the cashier, I scan the QR code, and my money magically gets transfered to the supermarket, or restaurant, or church. And people can send me money too! I just need to share my QR code to others.
And so with so many QR codes flying around, it is understandable why people might think that the most important thing is to get the QR code into the immigration counter, into the immigration system. But it is wrong.
I applaud the efficiency boost of the new immigration system but the core technology is not QR code. And I think by making QR code the main focus, it robs the general public the opportunity to understand what is the real technological game changer.
Look. QR code is just acting as a bar code. There is nothing inherently different from what the cashier when she scans the bar code in your grocery items than what you do when you scan a QR code with your phone.
When a barcode reader scans a barcode, it just reads in the black and white lines and converts them into 1s and 0s, which is translated into a string, or a sequence of characters: ABCs, 123s.
That’s also what happens when your smartphone scans a QR code, it scans the black and whites into a sequence of characters. Because it’s a 2D square, and not a 1D line, you can put more data or characters into a QR code than you can with a barcode. That is one difference.
The other is the ubiquity of scanners. How many guys you know have a barcode reader? And how many of them are carrying one as their everyday carry? None. How many guys carry a smartphone everyday? It’s the smartphones that have made barcodes or QR codes usable for everyone.
QR codes is not the core technology that powers up the immigration system. You can make your own QR code right now. There are websites that do that for you. Or you can just use Google Chrome and get it to generate a QR code for whatever website you want.
QR code just makes it easy for humans to interact with the system. We don’t have to write down, or key in the website address. We don’t need to key in our personal details, name, address, phonenumber, etc… With QR code, we can send or receive long cumbersome series of characters with just a click of a button.
It’s a convenience but fast immigration checks can be done without QR codes. Just look at Singapore’s system.
The article states that “the system utilises artificial intelligence, including facial recognition, iris scanning and biometric technologies.”
And if we had to nominate a technology for MVP (Most Valuable Player), facial recognition or biometric technologies would get it before QR code. QR code is nothing which is why I am surprised by the attention it got in the article.
We may live in the cusp of a generational shift at the immigration counter. There was a time when you landed at the airport, and you joined a long queue, waiting your turn to the immigration counter to give the man your passport. He may ask, “What is your business here?”, “Where are you staying?”, “When will you leave?”. He checks that your face matches the face in the passport, and hopefully, he lets you through.
Facial recognition means the computer figures out whether your face matches the passport photo.
Fingerprint recognition records and compares your fingerprint against either your previous entry, so you are who you say you are, because you can’t change your fingerprints.
If you can seamlessly integrate these two technologies, you could even do away with the QR code or even passports. You can submit your passport details before you travel, and when you arrive they have everything they need to process you for entry.
What I would like to know is how A.I. is used. I hope it’s not just a buzzword. You can use A.I. to display a personalised welcome to Malaysia note to the traveller. But that’s a trivial use case. That doesn’t showcase A.I.’s ability to solve hard problems. So what are the hard problems in immigration that A.I. can solve once and for all? That would be a great article to read. Not this report about QR codes.
I don’t blame the reporters or journalists. I don’t even blame the Malaysian home minister. They could all just parroting whatever the technology vendor was promoting to them. Because it’s easier to talk about QR codes. Everyone knows what it is.
But it doesn’t give credit to the real star. It’s like giving the Oscars to the guys who make road signs. Sign makers are important people but they are not the ones that make the movie magic happen.
Watch how I pivot this to spiritual stuff.
Just as how QR codes can take the spotlight away from the real technologies that do the work, so some aspects of Christianity can be over-emphasised until people lose the real meaning of Christianity.
For example, I noticed that many people want to talk about evolution, or the role of women in ministry or society, or about homosexuality, and these are all issues that the Bible speaks on, but is that the core of the Christian faith?
The centre of the Christian faith is Christ. So if you want to know or want to discuss about Christianity, we really need to talk about Jesus. Everything else is peripheral to the person, his life and work, of Jesus Christ.
So let’s keep the main thing the main thing, whether it’s technology in immigration or Jesus Christ in the Christian faith.
This is the Daily Monsoon, a podcast where I connect current events to matters of faith. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.