What the chip actually holds, what the tap actually does, and the two ways it fails that nobody selling you a metal card will mention. Then how to use the one you already own.
An NFC business card is a physical card with a chip in it that opens your digital business card when tapped against a phone. The chip stores a web address and nothing else. It is worth being clear about what that means: the NFC card is not the digital business card, it is one way of triggering it, and a QR code or a link triggers the same thing with nothing to buy and nothing to remember to carry.
Nearly every page you will read about NFC business cards is published by somebody with a card to sell you. This one is not, so here is the plain assessment.
The tap is a good moment. Holding a piece of metal against somebody’s phone and watching your card appear is more satisfying than asking them to point a camera at a square, and in a room where everyone is handing over paper it does mark you out. That is a real benefit and it is worth something.
What it is not is a capability. The chip holds a web address. Your digital business card is the thing at that address, and it is exactly as good or as bad whether you arrived by tap, by QR code, or by a link in a text message. Nobody has ever been given a better card because the trigger was NFC.
It also adds two ways for the handover to fail that the alternatives do not have. You have to have the card on you, which is the entire problem paper had. And their phone has to have NFC enabled and be recent enough to read a tag in the background, which on Android is a setting people turn off and on older iPhones is a menu nobody knows about. When the tap does not work, what saves the moment is the QR code, which is why every serious NFC card is sold with one printed on the back.
All three open the same card. They differ in what has to be true for them to work.
| NFC tap | QR code | A link | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anything to buy | Yes, a card or tag | No | No |
| Anything to carry | Yes, the card itself | No, it is on your phone | No |
| Works on every modern phone | Most, if NFC is enabled | Yes, any camera | Yes |
| Works across a table | No, needs a few centimetres | Yes | Yes |
| Works over the phone or by email | No | No | Yes |
| Works if their phone is locked | No | Yes, from the lock screen camera | Yes |
| Needs an app at either end | No | No | No |
This is a table about triggers, not about products. Whichever row you use, what opens is the same card.
An NFC card you bought from anybody — Popl, Dot, a white-label one off a marketplace — is almost always rewritable. Open the vendor’s app or any free NFC writer, write your cardr.co/yourname address to the tag, and it now opens your Cardr instead. You do not need to buy a second card, and we have not made one to sell you. If you want new hardware rather than a rewrite, buy it from whoever makes one you like the feel of; there is no reason it has to come from a software company.
This is what the chip is pointing at. The chip has done its whole job by the time you are looking at this.
cardr.co/kai
Read down until a line is you, then stop.
The category, and the six questions worth asking before you pick.
Apple Wallet The Apple Wallet versionA card that works with no signal, and nothing to carry.
Comparison Digital vs paperRow by row, including where paper still wins.
How to Make one in a minuteSeven steps, no app, nothing to buy.
An NFC business card is a physical card, usually plastic or metal, with a small chip in it. Holding it against the back of an unlocked phone opens a web address — normally your digital business card. The chip stores the address and nothing else: no contact details, no photo, no data about the person tapping it. It is a trigger, not a card.
Yes. Every iPhone from the XR onwards reads NFC tags in the background with the screen on and unlocked, so tapping the card pops up a notification without opening any app first. Older iPhones need you to open the Control Centre NFC reader manually, which in practice means the tap does not work and you fall back to the QR code.
On most modern Android phones, yes, though NFC can be switched off in settings and often is. This is the practical reason to have a QR code as well: it works on every phone with a camera regardless of settings, hardware or how old the device is.
No, and neither does the person tapping it. Both ends are handled by the operating system. What they land on is a web page, so if that page then asks them to install something, the tap was the easy part and the product has wasted it.
As an object, often yes: the tap is a genuinely good moment and a metal card is a nice thing to hand somebody. As a mechanism, it adds nothing a QR code does not already do, and it introduces two ways to fail that a QR code does not have — you have to be carrying it, and their phone has to have NFC switched on. Buy one because you like it, not because you think the digital card needs it.
Usually, yes. Most NFC cards and tags let you rewrite the address they point at, either through the vendor’s own app or with any free NFC writer app. Point it at your cardr.co address and it will open your card. Cardr sells no hardware at all, so there is nothing here we would rather you bought.
Not meaningfully. NFC has a range of a few centimetres and needs the phone to be unlocked with the screen on, so somebody would have to hold their phone against your card while you watched. The chip also only holds a public web address, so reading it tells them exactly what handing them the card would have told them anyway.
The digital card is the product and it is free. Any NFC tag you own or buy later will point at it.