How to make a digital business card.

Pick your address, add your details and links, choose a design and add it to Apple Wallet: creating one takes about a minute, free.

Free forever · No card details · About a minute

Cardr UpdatedToday
DanielOsei
Head of Partnerships
Larkwell Group

cardr.co/daniel-osei

Scan or tap to savei
Example Oxford is on the free plan

Example of what happens next: Megan Hollis scans Daniel’s card, saves Daniel to their contacts and chooses to send their own details back. The next morning at 9 a.m., Cardr Pro reminds Daniel to follow up, with the email already drafted.

To make a digital business card, pick the address it will live at, add your name, role, company, number and email, choose a design and add it to Apple Wallet. On Cardr it takes about a minute on your phone, free. Then test it: scan your own QR with a friend’s phone before your next event. Change a detail later and every code you have handed out opens the new version.

How it works

What you are making, in three screens.

The card you make below works like this the first time someone scans it.

  1. 1

    Your pass

    Steps 1 to 5 below make this: your card in Apple Wallet, with its QR code.

  2. 2

    Their screen

    Your page opens in their browser. Save puts you in their contacts, then they can send theirs.

  3. 3

    Your list

    What they send lands with your note. Pro drafts the follow-up from it.

ExampleDaniel Osei’s card is the example in the hero, and Daniel Osei and Megan Hollis are both invented. Every screen is drawn from the product: the pass, the card page and the email Pro sends.

Step by step

Seven steps, and only the first one is yours.

Six of these take a few seconds. The one worth slowing down on is the third, and it is the one everybody rushes.

  1. Type your name
  2. Claim your link
  3. Add to Apple Wallet
  4. Show your QR

About a minute

  1. 01

    Pick the address it will live at

    Your card needs somewhere to be. On Cardr that is cardr.co/yourname, and it is the same string you will put in your email signature and under your QR code. Take the plain version of your name if it is still there, because it is the one people can read out loud over a table.

  2. 02

    Put in the four things that get used

    Name, role, company, one phone number and one email. Resist the urge to list everything. The card is read in about four seconds while somebody is standing up, and every extra row lowers the chance the row you care about is the one they tap.

  3. 03

    Add only the links you want tapped

    A booking link, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, a review link, your portfolio. One or two beats six. If a link exists because it felt incomplete without it, take it off.

  4. 04

    Choose how it looks

    The design is the least important decision on this page and the one people spend longest on. Cardr ships 16 finishes, with the Oxford design on the free plan. Pick a dark one if you want the QR to read cleanly in a badly lit room, which is where most of these get scanned.

  5. 05

    Add it to Apple Wallet

    On an iPhone, tap Add to Apple Wallet and Safari hands it straight to the Wallet app. It is now on the device rather than in a browser tab, so it opens with no signal and does not get buried under the next forty photos you take.

  6. 06

    Hand it over, and get theirs back

    Show the QR code, send the link, or tap an NFC tag you already own. On Cardr one scan opens your card, Save puts you in their contacts, and they can then send you their name and email or number, which is the difference between a card that empties your hands and one that fills your contacts.

  7. 07

    Change it later instead of reprinting it

    This is the reason to go digital at all. Edit the card once when your number, title or employer changes, and your pass and your page change with it, so the same QR code, every link you have sent and every contact saved from your page lead to the new details. There is nothing to reprint.

You edit onceNew job title
  • Your Wallet passUpdated
  • Your pageUpdated
  • The same QRUpdated
  • Every link you sentUpdated
  • Contacts already savedLinks to your page

Do the seven steps now.

About a minute on the phone in your hand. Free, with no expiry and no card details.

Make your free card

The step nobody lists

Making the card is not the hard part.

Most guides stop when the card exists. That is the easy minute. The hard part is Thursday, three days after the event, with nine names and no memory of which one said they were re-tendering in March. A nicer gradient does nothing for that. A note on each person, and a reminder on the day, does. Cardr keeps the note free, and Pro writes the message.

  1. 1They scan your pass
  2. 2They tap Save
  3. 3They can send theirs back
  4. 4Pro drafts your follow-up

ExampleDaniel Osei and Sam Rivera are invented.

Keep reading

Where to go next.

Examples 16 real card designs

Every finish rendered by the live product, not a gallery of stock mockups.

 Apple Wallet Add it to Apple Wallet

What a signed .pkpass is, and why it works with no signal.

 Free The free version, in full

What you get for nothing, and where the free tiers elsewhere are capped.

 Free tool vCard QR generator

Just want a contact QR code? Make one, no signup.

 Cardr Pro The follow-up, done for you

An AI draft from what you said, and a reminder on the day you said.
Free and Pro

What the card costs: nothing.

Everything in the seven steps is on the free plan, with no expiry and no card details. Pro adds the follow-up after the meeting.

What the free plan includes and what Pro adds
FreeForever, no card detailsPro£12 a month, or £9 a month billed annually (£108 a year)
Nothing to install for the person you meet Included Included
A no-signal code that holds your contact itself Included Included
Pass designs One: Oxford IncludedAll 16
Your follow-ups, written and ready One draft and reminders about your first three people IncludedEverything
Every lead, sorted Your list, notes, tags, who replied, the timeline, search and export IncludedEverything
See what your card wins you Views, scans, swaps and saves, counted IncludedEverything
A page that gets you booked Booking, WhatsApp and review links on your page IncludedEverything
Start freeEverything Pro does
Questions

Making one, answered.

How do I make a digital business card for free?

Pick an address, fill in your name, role, company, number and email, choose a design and add it to Apple Wallet. On Cardr that whole sequence is free with no expiry and no card details taken, and it takes about a minute. Several other products also have a free tier; the thing to check is where it is capped, because the cap is usually on collecting contacts rather than on anything cosmetic.

How long does it take?

About a minute if you know your own phone number. The part people spend real time on is choosing a design, which is also the part that matters least. If you are in a hurry, take the default, hand the card out this afternoon and change the look next week; the link you have already shared will open the new look.

Do I need to be a designer?

No, and you should not try to be. A digital business card is read in about four seconds by somebody who is standing up and about to walk off. It needs to be legible and it needs the QR code to scan in poor light. Everything past that is for you rather than for them.

How do I make a digital business card on iPhone?

Open cardr.co in Safari, pick your address, fill in the card and tap Add to Apple Wallet. Safari hands the pass to Wallet, and it opens from there with no signal. There is no app to install and no desktop step. The people you meet can be on any phone.

Does my QR code change when I update my card?

No. The code points at cardr.co/yourname, which stays the same. Edit your number or job and the same code, every link you have sent and your Wallet pass open the new details. That is why it is safe to print the code on a sign or a Cardr Metal card.

What should I put on it?

Name, role, company, one number, one email, and the one or two links you actually want tapped. Leave off the fax number, the second email, the address of an office people will not visit, and any social account you do not check. A shorter card gets used more.

Do I need to buy an NFC card to make one?

No. A QR code or a link does the same job with nothing to buy and nothing to remember to carry. NFC is a nice object and it is genuinely satisfying to tap, but it is an accessory rather than a requirement. If you already own one, point it at your card’s address and carry on using it.

Cardr Free

Your card
$0
Apple Wallet pass
$0
Your page
$0
Contacts
No limit
Exchanges
No limit

Every year$0

No card details

More on digital business cards

Start with Digital business cards: What one is, what it costs, and which format still works when the signal does not.

Every guide on digital business cards

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