Paper business cards die at the bottom of a bag. A vCard QR code in the corner changes what happens in the ten seconds after someone takes yours: one scan and your details are in their contacts, spelled correctly, before the card is even pocketed.
What a vCard actually is
vCard is the contact-card format every phone already understands — the same thing that arrives when someone shares a contact with you. Encode one in a QR code and the scan opens the phone add contact screen, pre-filled. The other person reviews it and taps save.
Nothing is transmitted to anyone. The data lives in the pattern itself, so the code works with no signal, no app, and no account.
Which fields to include
Our generator supports these, and only the name is mandatory.
| Field | Include it? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Required | First word is treated as the given name |
| Phone | Almost always | This is usually the whole point |
| Almost always | Adds little to the pattern density | |
| Company | If it helps them place you | Short forms beat legal entity names |
| Job title | Optional | Skip it if your title changes often |
| Website | Optional | A short domain costs little; a long path costs a lot |
| Address | Rarely | The single most expensive field, and rarely what people need |
Every field you add makes the code harder to scan
This is the part people miss. A QR code grows in discrete steps as you add data — more characters, more modules, and each module gets physically smaller at a fixed printed size. A name, phone and email fit comfortably on a business card at 2 cm. Add a full street address and the same 2 cm square becomes a dense grid that struggles under a dim restaurant light.
If you want a rule: put in what somebody needs to contact you, and leave out what they can look up. Your address is on your website. Your website is one short line.
Sizing it on the card
Print the code at 2 × 2 cm minimum, with clear space around it. If your details make the pattern dense, go to 2.5 cm or drop a field — do not shrink it to fit the layout.
That clear space is not optional decoration. Scanners need a blank margin to find where the code ends, and a card design that runs a border or a colour block right up to the edge of the pattern is one of the most common reasons a business card code fails. Our quiet zone guide explains how much you need.
Phone numbers and Thai names
Write the number in international form: +66 followed by the number without its leading zero. A locally formatted number may save fine on a Thai phone and be useless to someone dialling from abroad — which is exactly the person a business card code is for.
Thai characters in names and company fields are fine; the format handles them, and so do modern phones. What is worth doing is including a Latin transliteration of your name if you hand cards to people who do not read Thai, because a contact they cannot search for is a contact they will not find again.
It cannot be changed later
The details are baked into the pattern. A new number, a new company, a new title — each means a new code and a new print run. Before you order a thousand cards, ask which of these fields might change within the life of the box. If the answer is your job title, leave the job title out.
If a changeable code is what you actually need, that is a different tool: a code pointing at a web page you control, where you can edit the page whenever you like. We cover the trade-off in can you edit a QR code after printing.
Before it goes to the printer
- Scan it with an iPhone and an Android, using the built-in camera
- Check every field lands in the right place, especially the name split
- Print one card at final size and scan that, not the screen
- Check it still scans after the card is laminated, if it will be
The full sequence is in our pre-print checklist.
Make a vCard QR code — everything stays in your browser.