NFC business cards that stay right after you change your number

How an NFC business card works

NFC stands for near field communication: a short-range radio link that works over a few centimetres, the same one a contactless bank card uses. The chip in the card has no battery; the phone’s reader powers it for the moment it is read, which is why these are also sold as contactless business cards. Opening your profile then uses the phone’s data connection, as any web page does.

You hold the card near the top of their phone. Their phone reads a short code from the chip and shows a notification. They touch it, their normal browser opens, and your profile page loads — name, job title, mobile, email, website, WhatsApp, socials, whatever you have chosen to put on it. The whole thing takes about a second, and it finishes with your details on their screen rather than in a pile on their desk.

What does not happen is the part that matters. They do not install an app. They do not make an account. They do not scan anything unless they want to. There is no step where somebody has to agree to something before your phone number appears, which is precisely why people reach the end of it. Every extra step in a hand-over loses some of the people you just met, and this one has none.

From there they can save you to their contacts in one more tap, or send their own details back to you without leaving the page. That second thing is the part most people do not expect a business card to do.

What is actually on the card

Physically it is a bank-card-sized card (a touch different from the usual UK business card size) with a chip laminated inside it and a QR code printed on the back. On the front is your name, your handle and whatever design you have chosen — you can make your own in the Design Studio or pick one of the ready-made ones on the order page.

What is not on it is your phone number. The chip carries a permanent code that means nothing on its own; we hold the record of what that code opens. That one decision is why the card survives you changing your number, and it is the main thing separating these from the pre-encoded cards sold for a few pounds. What happens when you change your number sets out the difference in full.

Which phones read an NFC business card

Effectively all of them, because the card does not rely on tapping alone. Every iPhone from the XR onwards reads an NFC card by holding it near the top of the handset with the screen awake, and no setting needs turning on. Mainstream Android handsets of the last several years do the same, though a few have NFC switched off by default and some very cheap models never had it.

That is what the printed QR code is for, and it is not a consolation prize. Older phones, work phones locked down by an employer, and anybody who simply reaches for the camera first all land in exactly the same place. In practice you hold the card out and whichever one they reach for works, which means you never have to ask a new contact what sort of phone they have. More on how the QR side works, and how to check whether a phone has NFC and switch it on.

What happens in the week after

A plain paper card is a one-way transaction: you give something away and hear nothing until somebody calls. A card that opens a web page can do the other half. Anybody looking at your profile can send their own name and number back to you in a couple of taps, with no app and no account, and it lands in your dashboard tagged to the card that produced it.

Your dashboard also counts every tap and every scan, per card. This is included rather than sold as an upgrade, for the plain reason that a card you cannot measure is a card you cannot tell is working — and most people are genuinely surprised by which of their cards does the work. How contact-back works, and what the analytics show.

NFC business cards in the UK: materials and prices

The chip is the same in all of them and so is everything behind it. The material changes how the card feels when you hand it over and nothing else, so pick on that basis rather than on features.

• Plastic, £24. The everyday one. Full colour, takes a design well, survives a pocket. If you are handing out a lot of cards, this is the one.
• Bamboo, £35. Engraved rather than printed, so it has less colour range than plastic — worth knowing before you pick it. It feels different in the hand, which is the point.
• Metal, £59. Laser-engraved, heavy, and the one people comment on. It is a deliberate object rather than a card.
• Team pack, £95. Five plastic cards with everyone on the same design. Add their emails at checkout and each card links itself when they make their free profile. Cards for small teams.

Every card is paid for once, with UK postage included. There is no limit on how many times a card can be tapped or scanned, and no tier where that limit appears later. The profile behind the card is free whether you buy one or not — you can set one up and share it by QR today, and order a card later pointing at the profile you have already built. Full pricing, and why there is no subscription.

Not everybody needs a chip. If you give cards away by the hundred, our QR code business cards are printed card carrying the same live code, scanned rather than tapped. And if the job is asking customers for reviews, Google review cards open your Google review page instead of your profile.