Glossary
QR fallback
A QR code shown alongside an NFC card so phones that cannot tap, or have NFC switched off, reach the same page with their camera. Any card that relies on NFC alone loses those visitors.
Tapping fails more often than vendors admit. NFC may be switched off in the settings, the phone may be older than the iPhone 7, a thick case may sit between the antenna and the card, or the person may simply not know where to hold it. Each of those is a contact lost at the exact moment someone wanted to give it.
A QR code removes the dependency. It encodes the same address as the chip, and the camera app on every phone sold in the last decade reads it without an extra application.
Where to put it
On the back of the card, where it does not compete with your name. On the closing slide of a talk, where a room of two hundred can scan it at once and no tag would help. On a stand panel at standing height. On a badge, next to the printed name.
The code needs about two centimetres on a printed card to survive being scanned at an angle in bad light. Below that, error correction stops compensating.
Both count the same
A scan through the camera and a tap through the chip open the same page and record the same visit, so a campaign counter does not care which route the person took. Nothing is lost by offering both, and the practical answer to "does NFC work on every phone" is that it does not have to. See NFC for why the tap is limited to a few centimetres.
Questions
Because a tap fails for ordinary reasons: NFC turned off, an older phone, a thick case, or someone unsure where to hold it. The camera works on every phone, so the QR code catches the visitors the chip would lose.
Related terms
- NFC
- Near Field Communication, a radio standard that lets two devices exchange a small amount of data when they are a few centimetres apart. On a business card it holds one thing: a web address. The card carries no battery and stores no personal data.
- Campaign
- In LeadShake, one card and the register that goes with it. Your account has a default campaign that never expires, and each Event Pass opens an extra one for 30 days so an event keeps its contacts separate.