QR codes for business cards

A printed phone number has to be typed in by hand, which mostly means it never is. A vCard code drops your name, number and email straight into someone’s contacts while they are still standing in front of you.

How to add a QR code to your business card

1. Open the Contact tab — it builds a vCard, the format phones understand as "a person".
2. Fill in your details: name, phone, email, company and website.
3. Generate and scan it yourself first. Check the contact card that appears on the phone says what you expect.
4. Place it on the card at 2cm or larger, with a few millimetres of clear space around it.

vCard or a link to your website?

A vCard saves your details even with no signal, works forever, and needs no hosting. The catch is that it is fixed: change jobs or numbers and the printed cards are wrong.

A link to your site — or a LinkedIn profile — can be updated without reprinting, but needs a connection, adds a step before anything is saved, and depends on that page continuing to exist.

For most people a vCard is the better trade, because a box of business cards is usually replaced long before it runs out anyway. If you change roles often, point the code at a page you control instead.

Designing it onto the card

What to leave out

Everything in the code is readable by anyone who scans it, and business cards get passed around. A work number and work email are fine. A home address or personal mobile you would rather not hand to strangers are not — and once the cards are printed, you cannot take it back.