Almost always technical incompetence, I think. At some level "compatibility" is correct. System 1 outputs binary data, system 2 takes that and turns it into JS

Almost always technical incompetence, I think. At some level "compatibility" is correct. System 1 outputs binary data, system 2 takes that and turns it into JSON, system 3 encodes that in base64, system 4 turns that into QR codes, and system 4 was what was mandated for producing all of the organisation's QR codes.