Build a contact card QR code

Scan one of these and no website opens. The phone offers to save a new contact instead, with the name, number, email and company already sitting in the right fields, one tap away from being in the address book for good. The format is vCard 3.0, the same standard your phone uses when it exports a contact, which is why iOS, Android and desktop mail clients all read it without anything installed in between.

How to fill it in

• A first or last name is required. Leave blank anything you would rather not hand to a stranger.
• Write the phone number in full international form, starting with the country code, so it still dials from abroad.
• Company and job title are worth adding even on a personal card, because they are what people search their contacts by months later.
• The website field appears as a tappable link on the saved contact.
• Scan your own code and save the contact once before printing anything, to check each field lands where you expect.

Where a contact code earns its keep

Conference badges and lanyards, so a conversation ends with a saved contact rather than a pocket of cardboard. Email signatures, with the code under the sign-off. Shop windows and van doors, where somebody walking past can keep the number without writing it down. Estate agent boards. The back of an ordinary printed card, which keeps the object people still expect and adds the version their phone can read in a second.

None of these details are collected. Your name, number and email are turned into vCard text and drawn as a pattern by script running in this browser tab, and no copy is sent anywhere. That matters more here than on most pages, because a contact card is personal data by any definition.