Both put your details on someone else's phone. They fail in completely different places, and the place they fail is decided by how far apart the two of you are standing.
QR wins at distance and on any screen; NFC wins when you want a physical object to feel like a product. The deciding question is not which technology is newer. It is whether the other person can physically reach the thing you are holding. Cardr sells neither, which is why this comparison is not trying to talk you into hardware.
By Cardr · Published 4 August 2026 · 5 min read
This is the whole comparison. Everything else is detail.
NFC needs their phone within a couple of centimetres of the tag. That means they have to take their phone out, unlock it, and physically touch it to the card or the tag in your hand. It is a genuinely nice moment when it works, and it works about as well as the other person’s willingness to hold their phone against a stranger’s object.
QR needs them to point a camera at a shape. That works from across a table, across a desk, from a screen, from a printed page, or from a lanyard while both of you are holding drinks. It also works when they are already holding their phone, which is most of the time.
Drawn to one scale, the difference stops being a matter of opinion.
They unlock their phone and touch it to the thing in your hand. There is no version of this that happens across a table.
A 5cm code on a phone screen reads from about half a metre. A 20cm code on a stand reads from about two, which is why the bar fades rather than stopping.
There is a second asymmetry that gets skipped. Background NFC tag reading has been standard on iPhones since the XS generation, but on older handsets the reader has to be opened from Control Center first, and most people do not know it is there. QR scanning has been in the native iPhone camera since iOS 11 and in effectively every Android camera app for as long.
The QR failure mode is “point it again”. The NFC failure mode is “nothing happened”.Followed by you explaining how their phone works, thirty seconds into a conversation. That is not a position you want to be in.
Most comparisons give you two columns. The one people actually end up running has three.
| NFC tag | QR code | Printed card with a QR on it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it needs from them | Phone out, unlocked, and touched to the tag | A camera pointed at a shape | A camera pointed at a shape |
| Works across a table | No | Yes | Yes |
| Works when your phone is dead | Yes | No | Yes |
| You can leave it behind | Only by giving the card away | No | Yes |
| Details can change later | If the tag points at a URL | If the code points at a URL | If the code points at a URL |
| Returns their details to you | No | Only if the page asks for them | Only if the page asks for them |
| What it costs you | Per card, from a printer | Nothing | Per card, from a printer |
Cardr sells neither the tags nor the printing, which is why this table has no column for us in it.
The tap is not the problem. Nobody has ever lost a deal because a tap was slightly slow.
Both technologies solve getting your details onto their phone. Neither solves the thing that actually decides whether the conversation turns into anything: you leaving with their details, and a reason to write.
An NFC card that dumps your contact into their phone gives you nothing back. A QR code that opens your web page gives you nothing back. In both cases you have handed over information and received none, and a week later you have no record that the conversation happened.
That is the argument for an exchange rather than a broadcast, and it is the reason Cardr’s free tier includes the return leg rather than charging for it. Whichever way the details travel, the useful part is what comes back. The follow-up is where that gets spent.
Including the case where the answer is not us.
Cardr does not sell hardware, so there is nothing here we need you to pick.
Four situations. The honest answer is us in one of them.
No. And the places paper still wins are specific enough to name.
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Not equally. Background tag reading is standard on recent iPhones and on most modern Android handsets, but older iPhones need the NFC reader opened from Control Center first, which most people do not know about. QR scanning works from the native camera on effectively everything.
No. Cardr sells no physical hardware at all. If you have NFC cards from a printer, point the tag at your cardr.co address and they will open your card.
The working rule is about ten times the code's own width. A 5cm code on a phone screen reads from roughly half a metre; a 20cm code on an exhibition stand reads from roughly two. NFC, by contrast, is specified to work only within about 4cm.
Yes, and it is the common setup. A printed card with a QR code on it, and an NFC tag inside it, both pointing at the same web address. The address is the thing that matters; the tag and the code are just two ways of reaching it.
That is a taste question and it has moved a lot. QR went from novelty to completely ordinary during the years restaurants used it for menus. In most rooms in 2026 nobody thinks about it. In some rooms a heavy printed card still signals more, which is a real thing and not a technology problem.
Nothing for the other person to install, and no card details to start.