What a digital business card is and how it works

A web page that fits in your pocket

A digital business card is a small, fast web page with your contact details: name, job title, company, phone numbers, email, website, address and social profiles. It can also include your photo, your logo, a short introduction and links to your videos, PDFs and photos, such as your catalogue. It looks right on any phone and has one main button, the one that matters: save contact.

When it is tapped, the recipient’s phone downloads a vCard (.vcf) file, the standard understood by the iPhone and Android address books and by email programs. One tap and your details are in their contacts, spelled correctly and with your photo. Nobody has to type anything, so nobody gets a number wrong.

Four ways to share it

The same card can be handed out in several ways, and they all lead to the same place:

• Link. A short address such as tarje2me.com/c/firstname-lastname, to paste into an email, a WhatsApp message or your LinkedIn profile.
• QR code. Show it on your phone screen or print it on a poster, a badge or the footer of a quotation. The other person scans it with their camera.
• NFC. A physical card or sticker with a chip: just hold it near a phone and your card opens. iPhones from the XS onwards and most Android phones read it with nothing to install.
• Email signature. Your card in the signature of every email you send. (Apple and Google Wallet are coming soon.)

What really sets it apart from paper

The big advantage isn’t that it’s modern; it’s that it updates itself. The link, the QR code and the NFC chip don’t store your details: they point to your card. If your job title, phone number or logo changes tomorrow, you change it once and every card you have already handed out shows the new version. With paper, the same situation means binning a whole box and reprinting.

There is a second, less obvious advantage: a digital card works both ways. Whoever opens it can leave you their details in a short form, with their consent, and that contact goes into your contact book, from where you can export it to your CRM. And you can see how many times your card has been viewed and through which channel, without collecting anyone’s personal data.

What to put on it

A good digital card is not a CV. The clearer it is, the better it works:

1. The essentials at the top: name, job title and company, with a recognisable photo.
2. The actions people actually use: save contact, call, WhatsApp, email and directions.
3. One line about what you do, written for someone who has just met you.
4. Only the social profiles you keep up. An abandoned profile does more harm than good.
5. A single featured item, if you have one: a short video, a catalogue or a link to book a meeting.

What about companies?

When an organisation makes the move, other needs come into play: every card should follow the same brand, staff shouldn’t be able to change the logo as they please, joiners and leavers should be handled automatically, and each salesperson’s contacts shouldn’t stay on their phone. That is what digital business cards for companies are for: a company template with locked fields, a central dashboard and, for companies running Odoo, an Odoo integration (coming soon) that will turn every employee into a card and every captured contact into a lead.

Does the paper card disappear?

Not necessarily. Many people still carry a physical card, but now it is an NFC card with a printed QR code: it is designed once, printed once and never goes out of date, because what it shows lives on the digital card. It is where the familiar gesture meets a contact that never becomes obsolete.

How to get started

Creating a free digital business card takes a couple of minutes: your details, your photo and a template. We verify your email to make sure the card is yours, and from then on you can share it by link, QR code or NFC. When you need more cards, analytics or media, the Pro plan is there; and if you are thinking about your whole team, let’s talk.