Guide · Updated 4 September 2026 · 3 min read
What is a vCard QR code and should my business card have one?
A vCard QR code carries your contact details in the code itself, so scanning it offers to save you as a contact with no website or app in between. It is the most useful thing a business card back can do. The cost is size: a typical vCard prints at 20 to 28 mm square, so it needs its own space and a short payload.
What is inside one
A vCard is a small text format that every phone understands. The QR code holds that text directly, which is why it works with no signal and no page to host. A version 3.0 vCard for a business card carries a handful of lines:
- Your name, and how it splits into given and family names.
- The company and your title, if either belongs on the card.
- A phone number, marked as mobile.
- An email address.
- A web address.
- A postal address, if people visit you.
Scanning it opens the phone's own “add contact” screen, filled in. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing needs to be kept online, which is the point.
What it costs in space
Every character in the vCard adds modules to the code, and every module needs 0.35 mm on paper. A name and a number alone print at about 19.9 mm square. Add company, title, email and website and it is about 25.5 mm. Add a postal address and it reaches 28.3 mm, a third of the width of a UK card.
The mistake that inflates codes is prose. A vCard has a NOTE field, and a sentence of marketing in it (“Open Tuesday to Saturday, small editions and restoration”) adds a hundred characters and pushes the code to 30 mm. That sentence belongs on the card, in type, where it can be read without a phone.
vCard or web address?
| vCard code | Web address code | |
|---|---|---|
| What scanning does | Offers to save a contact | Opens a page |
| Needs a website | No | Yes |
| Can be changed after printing | No | Yes, if the page changes |
| Printed size | 20 to 28 mm | 13 to 16 mm |
A vCard suits a card whose job is to be kept: a tradesperson, a consultant, anyone who wants to be in the phone when the need arises. A web address suits a card whose job is to send people somewhere now: a booking page, a portfolio, a menu. A card can only sensibly carry one code.
Three things to get right
- Say what it does. A short label beside the code, “Scan to save my details”, doubles the number of people who try it.
- Keep the details on the card too. The code is a convenience, not the only copy. The phone number is still set in type.
- Check it on a real phone before printing a box of them.A code that decodes on screen at full size and fails at 20 mm on paper is a box of cards that do not work.
How Cardsetting handles it
The studio builds the vCard from the details in the brief, sizes the code from the payload so every module clears 0.35 mm, draws it as vector art on its own plate, and decodes it from the rendered card before it can be shown. The designer offers a vCard rather than forcing one, and the code always points where the person said it should.
Questions people also ask
- Does a vCard QR code work without internet?
- Yes. The contact details are encoded in the code itself, so the phone reads them straight from the camera. Nothing is fetched.
- Can I update a vCard QR code after the cards are printed?
- No. The details are in the ink. If a number is likely to change, either print fewer cards or use a web address code pointing at a page you control.
- Do vCard QR codes work on iPhone and Android?
- Both. The camera app on either recognises a vCard and offers to add the contact. Very old phones may need a separate scanner app.