Prices

There isn’t actually any information in a barcode about the price of a product. This is because prices can change over time, and even from shop to shop. If the price was in the barcode, it could never change, so shops wouldn’t be able to have sales!

So how does the price get displayed at the checkout when the barcode is scanned? Well, the barcode scanner at the checkout sends the information to the shop’s main computer. The main computer has a list of the barcode information and prices for all of the products in the shop on that particular day. It finds the barcode in question, and sends back the price to the checkout, where it is displayed. This whole process takes less than a second for each barcode scanned. Pretty amazing isn’t it?