As many people go digital for their personal administration or (school) work, more and more households don't have a printer at home anymore. This trend generates more demand for occasional public printing, for example in public libraries, coffee shops, supermarkets, ... . Universal Print could be the ideal technology for public printers in these locations.
- OneDrive\PublicPrint would be the place where your documents for printing are stored. You could upload them to your OneDrive manually, use the Public Print button in Office 365 apps like Word, or upload them on print.microsoft.com without any license. This is your personal print queue.
- You walk to a public printer. Scan the QR code on the machine with the Microsoft Public Print or OneDrive app on your phone. Select the file(s) you want to print.
- Pay for your print job. e.g. with your credit card, Google/Apple pay or with prepaid print credits on your Microsoft account.
- The owner of the printer can choose the pricing, which is shown in the app. Microsoft collects the money and pays the owner every month (or gives a credit on their invoice). Microsoft gets a % on the Public Print revenue.
I'm really excited about a Public Print functionality based on Universal Print! What do you think?
