VizyNFC card or QR code: which to pick for a business card
How an NFC card and a QR code work, what each asks of the phone across the table, what it costs, and why both should lead to the same page.
Two gestures, one destination
An NFC card and a QR code do the same thing: they hand a web address to the phone of the person opposite. The QR code does it through the camera, NFC through a chip you bring close to the phone. In both cases what opens next is a page, yours, and the page does the work.
So "NFC or QR" is a question of gesture and cost, not of content. The content is the page behind it.
The QR code
There is nothing to buy. You download an image, print it or show it. Every phone sold since 2017 reads a QR code with its camera, no app needed. It goes anywhere: paper card, screen, poster, e-mail signature, slide.
What it asks: a camera, some light, and two seconds to aim. In a dark room, or with a code that is too small, it sometimes fails. And the person has to take their phone out and point it, which between two strangers is a slightly bigger gesture than it sounds.
The NFC card
A chip the size of a coin sits inside a plastic or wooden card. A web address is written on it. When a compatible phone comes within a centimetre or two, a notification appears offering to open the page. No camera, no aiming: you hold out the card, done.
What it asks: a card to buy (ten to forty francs for a finished card, one to three francs for a bare chip to stick on), and a phone that reads NFC in the background. On iPhone that has been the case since the iPhone XS, with nothing to switch on. On Android most recent models do it, provided NFC is enabled in the settings, which it is not always. A metal case, or a wallet with RFID shielding, blocks the read.
And one limit people forget: an NFC chip cannot be photographed or e-mailed. It only works in person.
The real price
It is not the chip. It is the page it leads to, and the time to keep it current. A forty-franc NFC card that opens an abandoned page is worth less than a free QR code that opens a living one. Some NFC card sellers charge a subscription for the page, and that is the actual business: the card is the bait.
Our advice
The QR code first, because it is free, goes anywhere and works with every phone. The NFC card second, on top, if you meet a lot of people in person and like the gesture. Both must point at the same address, so there is only one page to look after.
To write your address onto a blank chip, any free NFC app will do ("NFC Tools" on iPhone and Android): pick a record of type "URL", paste your card's address, write. You can lock the chip so it can no longer be changed; only do that once you are sure of the address.
What does not change
Whatever the gesture, the person ends up on a page. If that page is slow, asks for an account, or does not offer to save the contact in one tap, the most elegant NFC will have achieved nothing. That is why we made no cards at Vizy, only the page, and a QR code that leads there.