How Do NFC Business Cards Work? Chips, Phones and Links Explained

An NFC business card looks like any PVC card: a printed rectangle of plastic. Inside it, between two layers, sits a thin antenna and a chip no larger than a grain of sand. Tap the card against a phone and a web page opens, with no app and no typing. Here is what happens in that second, and how to choose the right chip.

The card has no battery

NFC stands for Near Field Communication. It works at 13.56 MHz over a distance of a few centimeters. The chip in the card is passive: it has no battery and no power of its own. When you bring the card close to a phone, the phone's reader creates a small magnetic field, the card's antenna picks up that energy, and the chip wakes up just long enough to answer.

That is why an NFC card never runs out of charge, never needs pairing, and still works years after it was printed.

What the card stores

The chip is a tiny memory. On a business card it usually holds one thing: a link, written in a standard format called NDEF. When the phone reads it, it opens the link in the browser.

The card does not contain your contact details. It sends the phone to a page that does: your profile, your portfolio, a booking page. The big advantage is that you can change that page whenever you like without reprinting the card.

Printags writes the content you choose to the chip before shipping: a link or a plain text. By default the chip is locked once written, so nobody can overwrite it; you can choose to keep it rewritable instead. See custom NFC encoding.

Which phones read it

Most Android phones read NFC tags when the screen is on. Recent iPhones (XS and later) read them without any app, in the background of the camera or the lock screen. Older iPhones need an app to read a tag.

Because a small share of people have NFC turned off or an old phone, a good card also prints the link as a QR code or in plain text.

NFC or RFID: what is the difference?

NFC (Near Field Communication) is a contactless technology that works at 13.56 MHz over a few centimeters. It is one form of RFID, the general term for identification by radio waves. The difference that matters day to day: a phone can read an NFC chip, but not most other RFID chips. The ones that work at low frequency or UHF need dedicated readers, and UHF chips are read from several meters away, the opposite of what a business card is for.

How do you read an NFC chip?

Bring the card to the phone. In most cases no app is needed.

Android: check that NFC is on in the settings, turn the screen on, then hold the card against the back of the phone.
iPhone: from the iPhone XS on, the phone reads the card without an app, with the screen on. Older models need a reader app.
If nothing happens: move the card slightly, because the antenna sits in a different place on each model, often near the top of the back of the phone. Take off a thick or metal case, which can block the reading.

Choosing the chip

Three chips cover almost every need:

NTAG213: the standard chip for business cards. Its memory holds a link comfortably, every recent phone reads it, and it is inexpensive.
NTAG424: a chip with built-in encryption. It can add a signed, changing code to the link at every tap, so a page can check that the tap really came from the original card and not from a copy. It is the choice when the card gives access to something that matters.
MIFARE 1K: the chip of access control and transport cards, with a 1 KB memory split in sectors protected by keys. Door readers and turnstiles are often built for it. It is not made for opening a web page: iPhones do not read it, so choose it only if your reader asks for it.

In short: NTAG213 to share a link, NTAG424 when you need to prove a card is genuine, MIFARE 1K when a door reader requires it.

From one card to a team

You do not need a large order to try it. On the Printags shop you can order from one card, with no minimum order and no subscription, and you can pay without creating an account. The price per card falls as the quantity rises, and delivery is free in France.

If the card is for a team, one card per person with their own name and link is what makes an NFC card feel personal. Access cards for a door reader are a different product: see PVC badges.