What kind of QR code should go on a business card?

A vCard code. It encodes your name, title, company, phone, email and website directly into the pattern, so one scan offers to save the whole contact — no page load, no network needed. The alternative, a code pointing at a link, adds a step and depends on that page still existing years later. Use a link only when the destination is the real goal, such as a portfolio or a booking page.

How big does a QR code need to be on a business card?

At least 2 × 2 cm of printed pattern, plus a clear white margin on every side. Business cards are scanned from roughly 20–25 cm, which by the one-tenth rule suggests about 2–2.5 cm. vCard codes are denser than URL codes because they carry far more characters, so do not shrink them to fit a crowded layout — trim the data instead.

Should a business card QR code be static or dynamic?

Static. A dynamic code routes through a redirect service, and printed cards outlive subscriptions: when the service lapses or shuts down, every card in every wallet stops working, and you cannot recall them. A static vCard code contains the contact data itself, so it keeps working with no account, no service and no renewal — even offline.

How do I keep the vCard QR code small enough to scan?

Cut the payload. Every character adds modules and makes the pattern denser. Include name, one phone number, one email, company and title; drop the postal address, secondary numbers, notes and social handles. A trimmed vCard prints cleanly at 2 cm, while a maximal one needs closer to 3 cm to stay reliable on ordinary phone cameras.

Guides2026-08-12

How to put a QR code on a business card

A business card is the one printed thing people keep for years — and the one place a QR code most often points at something that no longer exists. Encode the contact details themselves and the card outlives every service you could have depended on.

Encode the contact, not a link

There are two ways to put your details behind a card’s QR code, and they age very differently. A vCard code carries the contact record itself — name, title, company, phone, email, website — inside the printed pattern. Scanning it pops the phone’s “add contact” sheet immediately, with no page load and no signal required. A link code points at a page that then shows those details, which means one extra tap, one dependency on your hosting, and one more thing to keep alive.

For a card whose whole job is “here is how to reach me,” vCard wins on every axis that matters after printing. Reach for a link only when the destination genuinely is the point — a portfolio, a booking calendar, a menu of services. Even then, link to a page on a domain you control, never to a shortener.

What to include (and what to cut)

Every character you add packs more modules into the same square, and a denser pattern needs more physical space to stay readable. That makes a vCard a budgeting exercise, not a form to fill in completely.

Keep: full name, job title, company, one phone number, one email address, one website.
Cut: postal address (long, and rarely wanted from a card), second and third phone numbers, fax, notes, social handles, and anything you would change within a year.
Never include anything you would not print in plain text on the card itself. A static code is readable by anyone who photographs it — that is the trade for it working forever.

A trimmed vCard prints reliably at 2 cm. A maximal one — full address, three numbers, a note — needs closer to 3 cm, which is most of the short edge of a standard 85 × 55 mm card. Cut the data before you shrink the code.

Size and placement on an 85 × 55 mm card

Business cards get scanned from about 20–25 cm, and the working rule is that a code should be at least a tenth of its scanning distance — so roughly 2–2.5 cm of pattern. Treat 2 × 2 cm as the floor, never the target, because vCard codes are far denser than the short-URL codes that rule of thumb usually describes. The density correction, and the sizes for every other medium, are worked out in what size should a QR code be for print?

Placement matters as much as size. Put the code in a corner with real white space around it, not nestled against your logo or a coloured band — the margin around a code is what the scanner uses to find its edges. And keep it off the fold, off any spot varnish, and away from the edge where cards get thumbed and worn.

The mistake that wastes the whole print run

The expensive failure is not a code that never scanned — you would catch that. It is a code that scanned perfectly at the printer and died eighteen months later, because it was generated by a “free” dynamic-QR service and routed through that service’s redirect. When the trial ends or the company folds, every card you have handed out stops working at once, and there is no way to recall them. Cards are the worst possible medium for that risk: they sit in wallets for years.

A static code has no middleman to fail — the data lives in the pixels. That is the whole argument, laid out in do QR codes expire? If a code you already printed has stopped working, the diagnosis ladder in why your QR code isn’t scanning will tell you which of the six causes you are looking at.

Test before you print 500

Export at final size and print one proof on the actual card stock — matte and gloss scan differently under a spotlight.
Scan it with at least one iPhone and one Android, from a normal handshake distance, in ordinary indoor light.
Confirm the contact sheet shows every field spelled correctly. A typo inside a static code cannot be fixed after printing.
Keep the exported SVG. Reprinting from vector costs nothing; regenerating from memory in two years costs an afternoon.