vCard QR code generator

Fill in your details and you get a code that, once scanned, offers to save you to the address book — spelled correctly, with the phone number and the e-mail intact. The same answer also hands you an e-mail signature to paste, and a sheet of cards if you are doing this for a team. Free, no account, nothing stored.

What it does, and why it is here

Handing over a contact is the most reliably botched exchange there is. A name is misheard, a phone number loses a digit, an e-mail address is transcribed with the wrong domain — and none of those are discovered until the message that mattered fails to arrive.

A vCard QR code removes the typing on the other side. It carries a vCard 3.0 block, which is the version address books actually read: 4.0 is newer and better specified, and enough phones still import it badly that it would be the wrong choice for a code printed on paper.

The part that needs a tool rather than a template is the escaping. The format separates fields with semicolons and commas, so a comma in a job title or a semicolon in a company name splits the card in two, and what imports is a contact with the wrong name and no phone. Add to that N and FN — the structured name and the display name, both required, and inconsistent between them is how you get a contact filed under the wrong letter.

What you fill in

• Given name and family name — the minimum. They fill the structured name; the display name is composed from them.
• Organisation and job title.
• Telephone, written the way it should be dialled — keep the country code if the card will travel — and a second number with its type, for a landline or a home number beside the mobile.
• E-mail and website.
• Postal address — street, postal code, city, country. It is saved with the contact, and the phone opens it on the map.
• Note — opening hours, a floor, how to pronounce the name: anything the contact should keep with you.
• Size in pixels.
• A team, one person per line — given name,family name,organisation,role,phone,e-mail, up to 50. The PDF comes back as one business card per line, yours first; leave it empty and the sheet prints yours ten times, which is the other thing people want.

What you get back

• Your contact card as a QR code, downloadable.
• What the phone will see — the contact as an address book shows it, with its call, write and website actions. It is read back from the vCard and not from the form, so it is a genuine check that the code decodes to what you meant.
• The symbol version and its module count, with a warning past version 10: at that density a code on a business card gets hard to scan, and the fix is to shorten the note, drop the address, or print it larger. This is the number that decides whether the card works in a lobby.
• An e-mail signature — ready to paste into your mail client’s signature editor as HTML, with the code inline at 150 px. Nothing to host, nothing to load, and it survives being forwarded.
• A sheet of business cards, when you used the batch — drawn as text at the printer’s resolution rather than as a screen image stretched to 85 mm, because a card is read at arm’s length.

What it does not do

No photo. A portrait blows past what a QR code can hold at a density anything will scan, and the result would be a black smear on a business card.

It also does not host anything: the code carries the contact itself, so there is no link to a profile page that can go stale, and equally no way to update a card once it is printed. That is the trade, and for a business card it is the right one — the card outlives the service that would have hosted it.

What fits on a business card

The one constraint that decides how much to fill in.

The answer tells you which of those three you have landed in, so the decision is made before the cards are ordered rather than after.

Questions

Is it free? Can I use it commercially?

Yes to both. No account, no watermark, no limit.

Do you keep the contact details?

No. What you type is used to build the card and then forgotten — not stored, not logged, not indexed.

What is the minimum I have to fill in?

A name. Everything else is optional, and every field you add makes the code denser.

Can I include a postal address?

Yes — street, postal code, city and country each have their own field, which is what makes an address import cleanly instead of landing as one unparsed line. The phone will open it on the map.

Will it work on an iPhone and on Android?

Yes. Both recognise a vCard from the camera and offer to add the contact. That is the reason for version 3.0 rather than 4.0.

My card imports with the company name cut short.

Almost always a semicolon or a comma inside the organisation name. The tool escapes those; a hand-written vCard usually does not, and the field ends where the punctuation is.

How do I use the e-mail signature?

Copy it and paste it into your mail client’s signature editor in HTML mode. The code is embedded in the signature itself, so there is no image on a server to break later.

What size should I print it?

2 cm on a business card is enough at versions up to 10. Below that, or at higher versions, go bigger or take fields out — the version line in the answer tells you which case you are in.

Sources and further reading

• RFC 2426 — vCard 3.0, the format the code carries.
• RFC 6350 — vCard 4.0, and what it changes.
• QR code — versions, density and error correction.