Build a digital business card you can save or scan.

Fill in your details and get a standards-correct .vcf file plus a QR code, both generated entirely in your browser. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere, ever.

The interactive tool loads with this page and runs entirely in your browser.

What a digital business card actually is

The term covers three different things, and most products selling one will not tell you which they mean, because the differences are where the disappointments live.

Kind	What the other person ends up with	Updatable later
A contact file (.vcf, what this tool makes)	Your details saved in their phone's own contacts app	No. Once saved, it is their copy.
A hosted profile page	A link to a page with your details, photo and buttons	Yes, you change the page
An NFC card or tag	Whichever of the two above the tag points at	Depends on what it points at

An NFC card is not a third format. It is a piece of plastic that fires one of the first two when a phone touches it, which is why "NFC business card" and "digital business card" get used as if they mean the same thing when one is a delivery method and the other is the thing being delivered.

The genuinely useful setup usually uses both of the first two rather than choosing. The contact file is what gets you into someone's phone, which is the thing you actually wanted, and it keeps working with no internet and no page to visit. The hosted page is what lets you change your title or your number afterwards without tracking down everyone who scanned you. A card that offers the save and links to the page covers both.

How to make one, and how to hand it over

Fill in the fields above and you have a working card in a minute: the .vcf file to download and a QR code that carries it. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account, so the whole thing happens in this tab.

Handing it over is where people overthink it. There are five routes and they suit different moments.

A QR code on a printed card. The classic, and the reason the sizing warning above exists. A card-sized code needs to stay under roughly 20mm and still scan from arm's length.
A QR code on your phone screen. No printing at all. Pull it up, let them scan it. Screens are backlit and bright, so this is the most reliable of the five.
The .vcf file attached to an email. Every mail client on every platform opens it. Good for a follow-up, useless in person.
AirDrop or a share sheet. Fastest when both phones are the same platform and in the same room.
An NFC tag you program yourself. Blank NFC stickers and cards are cheap and any phone with an NFC writer app can point one at a URL. Raydar does not sell or provision the hardware, so this is a thing you do with your own tag rather than a product we ship.

One thing worth deciding before you print anything: whether the code carries the contact file itself or a link to a page. The card below tracks its own byte size and warns you when it crosses into the range where scanning gets unreliable, which is the point at which the link is the better answer.

Why .vcf is the format every phone already understands

A vCard is a plain text file, extension .vcf, that lays out a person's contact details in a format every major phone and desktop contacts app already knows how to read: iOS Contacts, Android Contacts, Outlook, Gmail, macOS Contacts, all of them. There is no app to install and no account to sign into. Opening a .vcf file, or scanning a QR code that contains one, hands your phone's own contacts app a ready-made entry with the name, numbers, emails and everything else already in the right fields. That is the entire appeal of the format: it is boring, universal infrastructure from the 1990s that nobody has needed to replace.

This generator runs the whole thing client-side. There is no server call, no account, and no daily limit: the fields you fill in build the vCard text directly in your browser, and the QR code is drawn from that same text locally too.

What happens when you scan the QR code

iOS and Android behave differently here, and it is worth knowing before you print a QR code on a card. On iPhone, the built-in Camera app recognises a vCard QR code directly: point the camera at it and a contact preview pops up with an "Add to Contacts" button, no extra app needed. On Android the experience varies more by device and camera app. Stock Google Camera and Google Lens both handle it the same way iOS does, but some manufacturer camera apps only show the raw decoded text or open a browser instead of a contact prompt, in which case Google Lens or a dedicated QR reader app is the reliable fallback.

Why a vCard QR code gets unreliable as it grows

A QR code has a fixed maximum data capacity, and every field you add to a vCard eats into it. Add a phone, an email, a full postal address, a couple of social links and a note, and you are already carrying a few hundred bytes. A QR code encoding that much data needs a denser grid of smaller modules to fit it in, and denser modules are exactly what a phone camera struggles to resolve at a small printed size, on a curved surface, or from a slight distance. This tool tracks the byte size of your card as you build it and warns you before the QR gets into that unreliable range, rather than handing you a code that looks fine on screen and fails at the point of actually scanning it.

The practical fix, if you want a rich profile with a photo, a bio and several links, is the same reason link-in-bio pages exist at all: encode a single short, stable link in the QR code instead of the whole profile, and let that link carry the rest (see what a URL shortener actually is for the mechanics). A short link is a handful of bytes regardless of how much sits behind it.

vCard 3.0 vs 4.0, and which one to pick

vCard 3.0 (RFC 2426, from 2003) is the version the widest range of software, old and new, reads without complaint. vCard 4.0 (RFC 6350, from 2011) is the current IETF standard: it cleans up some of 3.0's messier corners and assumes UTF-8 text by default instead of needing a separate character-set declaration. In practice, most modern phones handle both fine, but a handful of older or lower-effort contact importers only expect 3.0. That is why this tool defaults to 3.0 and offers 4.0 as a toggle rather than the other way around: pick 4.0 if you know the receiving system specifically wants it, otherwise 3.0 is the safer default.

The photo tradeoff

A vCard can embed a photo directly as base64-encoded image data inside the file itself, which is genuinely convenient: the picture travels with the contact, no broken links, no hosting required. The cost is size. Base64 encoding adds roughly a third to a file's byte count on top of the image data itself, and even a small, well-compressed photo can add tens of kilobytes to a card that was previously a few hundred bytes. That is almost always enough to push a QR code straight past the reliable-scanning range described above. If you add a photo here, downsize it first (this tool compresses what you upload before embedding it), and treat the QR code and the photo as a genuine either/or: a photo makes a great .vcf file to email or AirDrop, and a lean, photo-free card makes a great QR code to print.

Where Raydar fits

This tool builds the file. If you want that vCard living on an actual page, with a matching QR code, social links and a public profile you can update any time, that is exactly what Raydar's digital business card feature does. One honest limit: Raydar does not sell or provision NFC hardware. If you have your own NFC tag or card, you point it at your Raydar page URL yourself, the same way you would point it at any other link. Building and tagging campaign links to track how people found your card is a separate job, handled by our free UTM builder, and if you ever need to see what a link you were handed is actually carrying, our link decoder does the same fully client-side job this generator does, for URLs instead of contact cards.

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Questions

Is a digital business card free to make?

This one is, with no signup, no watermark and no daily cap, and nothing you type leaves your browser. Paid products in this category are generally selling the hosted page, the NFC hardware or team management rather than the card file itself, which is an open format any tool can write.

What is the difference between a digital business card and an NFC card?

An NFC card is a delivery method, not a format. The plastic holds a tiny chip that hands a phone a URL when they touch, and that URL points at either a contact file or a profile page. So an NFC card is a way of handing over a digital business card, not a different kind of one. You can point your own NFC tag at whatever you like; Raydar does not sell the hardware.

Should the QR code hold my contact file or a link to a page?

The contact file, if the card is lean. It works with no internet and saves straight into their contacts, which is the outcome you actually want. Switch to a link once you are adding a photo, a bio and several social profiles, because every field makes the code denser and a dense code printed small is the main reason QR codes fail to scan. The size warning above tells you when you have crossed that line.

Is any of my contact information uploaded or stored anywhere?

No. Every field on this page is processed entirely in your browser, including the QR code rendering. Nothing is sent to Raydar or anyone else, and closing the tab clears it.

Should I use vCard 3.0 or 4.0?

3.0 by default, since it is what the widest range of contact apps, old and new, reliably parse. Switch to 4.0 only if you specifically know the system receiving the card expects it.

Why did my QR code stop working after I added a photo?

A photo is base64-encoded straight into the file, which can add tens of kilobytes even after compression. That is usually enough to push the vCard past what a QR code can encode reliably at a normal print size. This tool warns you when that happens and disables the QR rather than generating one that will fail to scan. The .vcf download still works fine, since a downloaded file has no size ceiling the way a scannable QR code does.

Will this work for saving a contact on both iPhone and Android?

Yes, the .vcf format itself is identical either way. Scanning behaviour differs slightly: iPhone's Camera app opens an Add to Contacts prompt directly, while on Android the result depends on the camera app, with Google Lens or a dedicated QR reader as the reliable fallback if the built-in camera just shows raw text.

Can I edit the vCard after I download it?

Yes. A .vcf file is plain text, so it opens in any text editor if you want to tweak it by hand. It is usually simpler to come back here, adjust the fields, and download it again.

What if a phone number or email I enter isn't accepted?

The generator checks that each phone number and email looks like a real one before including it, and tells you exactly which entry it left out and why, rather than silently producing a vCard with a broken field inside it.