NFC stickers and cards are the closest thing to a futuristic business-card experience: someone taps their phone to your card and your profile pops up. No QR codes, no app, no scanning. They cost a few bucks online (search for "NTAG215 NFC card" or "NFC sticker") and you only have to program them once.
What you need
- An iPhone 7 or newer (these all support NFC writing).
- The businesscards.io iOS app, signed in to your account.
- A blank NFC tag or card. NTAG213 / NTAG215 / NTAG216 chips all work and are the most common.
How to write the tag
- Open the iOS app and find the card you want to write.
- Tap the menu icon on the card.
- Tap Write to NFC.
- The app puts your iPhone into write mode. A prompt asks you to hold the top of your iPhone against the NFC card or sticker.
- Hold them together until you see a confirmation. It usually takes one to two seconds.
- Test the tag: lock your phone, then hold the top of your iPhone against the tag again. Your card URL should appear at the top of the screen as a notification. Tap it to open the profile page.
Sharing with the tag
Once written, anyone with an NFC-capable phone (almost any phone made in the last several years) can tap the top of their phone against your tag to open your card. Most phones don't need an app for this; the URL appears as a system notification.
If a tag doesn't work
- Wrong chip. Some cheap "NFC" tags use chips iPhones can't write to. Stick with NTAG213, NTAG215, or NTAG216.
- Hold position. The NFC antenna on iPhones is at the very top edge. If your phone is in a thick case, you may need to remove it.
- Already written. Some tags ship pre-locked. If your tag was already encoded with something else and locked, it can't be overwritten.
Where to buy tags
Plain NTAG215 cards (credit-card sized, blank white) and sticker packs are widely available on Amazon and AliExpress, usually under a dollar each in packs of 10 or more. There's nothing special about the chip; it's the same hardware regardless of who's selling it.