NFC business cards explained, and when a QR code is better
How a tap card works, what it costs you in practice, where it fails, and why most people get more out of a printed code than out of a chip.
Read it →A QR code on a business card fails for four reasons: it is too small, the contrast is too low, it sits in the trim, or it opens something nobody wants. Fix those four and it scans first time from a card held at arm's length.
Make it at least 20 mm square
On an 85 by 55 mm card, 20 mm is a comfortable size and 15 mm is the floor. Smaller than that and a phone at arm's length in ordinary indoor light starts hunting.
A code also needs a quiet zone, which is a clear margin all the way round with nothing in it. Roughly 2 mm of empty space on every side. Text crowding a code is one of the commonest reasons a card scans on a desk and fails in a hand.
Use dark on light, and check the contrast
You can colour a code, foreground and background both. The rule is simple: keep the contrast strong. A pale code on a pale background is a code no camera reads.
If you are unsure, dark on white is never wrong, and it is what we draw by default. Avoid inverting it, light code on a dark card, because many phone cameras handle inverted codes badly. If your card is dark, put a light panel behind the code instead.
Place it where a thumb is not
The back face is the usual home for a code, centred or in a lower corner, with 3 mm of clearance from the cut line at minimum. The safe area is drawn for you on the canvas, and anything outside it can be trimmed off by a guillotine.
Avoid the bottom right corner if people tend to hold your card there, and avoid placing it across a fold or a crease on a folded card.
Print the SVG, not the PNG
Every link in the list carries its code beside it with a download button, and you can ask for SVG for print or PNG for a screen, setting the size and the two colours.
Use the SVG whenever it is going on paper. It stays sharp at any size because it is shapes rather than pixels. A PNG scaled up on a press produces soft edges, and soft edges are exactly what a camera struggles with.
Point it at a tracked link, not at a bare address
This is the part that matters most and is skipped most often.
A tracked link is a short address of ours that sends somebody to your card and records that it was used. It looks like visitingcards.store/l/ followed by eight characters, drawn from an alphabet with the look alike characters left out, so no zero against a capital O and no one against a lowercase L, because people do type these by hand off a printed card.
Two things follow from using one.
The printed code never has to change. You edit where it lands from your links screen, so a new number or a new job does not turn a box of cards into recycling.
You find out whether it worked. Give a different code to the printed batch, the event stand and your email signature, and afterwards the counts say which one brought people.
A link can point at your card, at Save my contact so the contact file downloads at once, at your card with WhatsApp open, at your website, or at an address you choose. Everything but the last follows your card, so changing the card never leaves a printed code pointing at the wrong thing.
Say what is behind it
A code handed over in silence gets a polite nod. Naming what it does gets a camera out.
"Scan that and my number saves straight into your phone."
Point the code at Save my contact and that sentence is true. It is the single highest return change on this page. For a cafe the better promise is often the menu; the restaurants and cafes page shows a card whose code leads straight to it.
What a saved card lets you do next
A scan that ends in a saved card is the start of something, not the end. Once someone has opened your card from the code and saved it to their phone, you can send them card notifications: a short note the day after you met, or a reminder of what you do a month later. If they add it to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet instead, the pass takes each change you publish to it and can carry notifications of its own. Pro is $0.99 a month and comes with a monthly allowance of notification credits. With add-ons to Pro, the same scan can lead further: a Book a session button, your store, or tickets to your next event.
Two things that quietly go wrong
The first scan is not a person. A chat app often fetches a link to draw its preview, and that fetch can show up as one hit. Treat the first count on a freshly shared code with a pinch of salt.
Deleting a link kills the paper. Anything printed with that code stops working, which is why the screen asks you to confirm. If a code is out in the world, point it somewhere else rather than deleting it.
The links and codes tab covers both, and the QR code business card page has the rest. A code needs a card to open, so make your free card and print its link.
Questions people ask
What size should a QR code be on a business card?
At least 15 mm square, and 20 mm is more comfortable. Leave about 2 mm of clear space around it.
Can I put my logo in the middle of the code?
Codes carry error correction, so a small centred logo often still scans. Test the printed card, not the screen, before ordering five hundred.
Should the code go on the front or the back?
The back, in almost every case. The front is for who you are; the back is for what somebody does next.
How do I know whether anyone scanned it?
Each link shows its own count on the links screen, and the analytics table lists every link with its type, its destination, its clicks and the share of your views that clicked it. You can make a code now and see.