Digital business cards: QR codes, vCards and what a scan does

When someone scans the QR code on your business card, the phone does one of two things: it opens a link, or it reads a contact stored right in the code. For nearly everyone, the link is the better choice. You can change the page whenever you like, it has buttons to call and message you, and a "Save contact" button puts your details in their address book with one tap, as a vCard file.

Two kinds of QR code on a card

The reason a QR code with the full contact gets dense is simple. QR codes come in 40 versions, from 21×21 up to 177×177 modules (the black and white squares). The more data you put in, the more modules it needs. A complete vCard with name, title, two phone numbers, email, address and website means a code with tiny squares that a phone struggles to read off a business card. A short link fits in a much airier code.

What a vCard is

vCard is the standard format for contact details, defined in RFC 6350 from 2011, at version 4.0. It has fields for everything an address book knows about: the display name (FN), the structured name (N), phone (TEL), email (EMAIL), company (ORG), job title (TITLE), website (URL), photo (PHOTO) and address (ADR). Google Contacts, for example, also downloads your address book as a vCard file when you want to move it to another account.

What we put in a vCard:

• your name exactly as you want it to appear in someone else's contacts;
• one main phone number, with the country code;
• your work email, job title and company name;
• the address of your page, so people can find their way back to you;
• a small photo or logo that doesn't bloat the file.

What happens during a scan, step by step

1. The person points the camera at the code and the phone shows the link.
2. They tap it and the page opens, no app required.
3. They see your name, your title and the buttons: Call, WhatsApp, Email.
4. They tap "Save contact," the vCard downloads, and they add it to their contacts.

Our own card works this way: opticaldesign.ro/c/alex. It has a "Save contact" button that downloads the vCard, plus WhatsApp, Email, Website, Call and "Request portfolio" (the page itself is in Romanian). When something changes, we update the page and the printed cards stay valid.

For a team, each person gets their own page at an address like yourcompany.com/c/name, and the QR code on their card leads there. The details are on our business cards page.

The QR code on the card: print rules

A QR code needs a white margin four modules wide on every side, with nothing printed in it. In the worked example from the company that invented the code, a 29×29 module code at 0.254 mm per module, plus the margin, comes out a little over 9 mm square. That's the technical minimum on a good printer. On a business card we make it larger, so an older phone in dim light can still read it.

We wrote more about where the code goes on the card in our article on QR codes on business cards. The short version: a dark code on a light background, a line next to it saying what you'll find there, and a test with three phones before printing.

What drives the cost

The card design, how many people on the team need their own page, how many languages the page has, and the print run. You get the price in the quote, once you send us the list.