vCard QR code generator
Skip the business-card typo. One scan and your contact details land straight in their phone.
Open the QR code generator →What a vCard QR code actually does
A vCard QR code encodes a standard vCard contact record — the same format your phone already uses for every saved contact. When scanned, most phones recognize the format instantly and offer to save it as a new contact, with name, phone, email, company, title and website already filled in, instead of opening a browser.
What GenHub encodes
Fill in first and last name, organization, title, phone, email and a website URL, and GenHub builds a VCARD 3.0 record — a BEGIN:VCARD/END:VCARD block with N and FN name fields, ORG, TITLE, TEL, EMAIL and URL lines. Only the fields you fill in are included, so a bare name-and-phone card stays short and clean.
Where it's actually useful
- Business cards and conference badges — no more retyping a stack of cards after an event.
- Email signatures — a small code that saves your full contact info in one tap from a phone camera.
- Storefront or vehicle signage — customers can save your business's number and site without typing while distracted.
- Networking one-off cards — a static code is free and permanent, which is exactly right for a fixed name and number that won't change.
Static is usually the right call here
Contact details on a printed business card don't need to be editable after the fact — if your phone number changes, you'd reprint the card anyway. A free static vCard code fits that reality; there's little reason to pay for a dynamic code just to encode a name and number, unless you're distributing the code somewhere you can't reprint easily, like a large banner or a vehicle wrap, and want the flexibility to update it.
Keeping it scannable
vCard payloads are longer than a typical URL, which makes the resulting QR code denser, with more modules. Keep error correction at the default and avoid adding a large logo on top of a vCard code — with more data packed in, there's less room to spare for occlusion than on a simple URL code.
Filling in the fields well
Use the name someone would actually search for in their contacts app, not a nickname or a company-wide alias. Put your direct number in TEL rather than a shared front-desk line if the point is for this specific person to reach you. And if you have a personal site or a scheduling link, the URL field is a good place for it — it lands in the same contact card entry most phones show alongside a "visit website" action.
vCard vs a plain URL to your contact page
You could just encode a link to an online "add me to your contacts" page instead of a vCard — but that adds a network round trip and a page load before anything gets saved, and it fails outright with no signal or dead WiFi. A vCard QR code works completely offline because the contact data is already inside the code; nothing needs to be fetched.
FAQ
Will it work on both iPhone and Android?
Yes — both platforms' native camera apps recognize the vCard format and offer to save it as a new contact.
Can I include a photo in the contact card?
No — GenHub's vCard fields cover name, organization, title, phone, email and a website URL; embedding a photo would make the code too dense to reliably scan.
What happens if I leave a field blank?
Blank fields are simply omitted from the vCard record — you don't get an empty ORG: or TITLE: line taking up space in the code.
Is this different from a plain phone number QR code?
Yes. A phone-number code just opens the dialer with that number; a vCard code saves a full contact — name, company, title, email and site — directly to contacts in one action.
Does scanning a vCard code require an internet connection?
No — the whole contact record is encoded directly in the pattern, so saving it works completely offline.