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How to create a Sustainable NFC Digital Business Card

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Sustainabil-IT Story

At Sustainabil-IT, we help businesses move towards a more sustainable future, leveraging digital technology to reduce the environmental impact of day-to-day business. We believe that plastic needs to be reduced, but we also believe that the reduction of paper is essential!

So, we have put together a small little guide for helping you to enter the future and allowing you to maintain business connections wherever you bring your phone! Let’s admit it: we have sometimes forgotten to take business cards to that vital networking event, but a phone is something you never leave home without.

The Advantage

  1. Low Cost – The Tag can be made for as little as 1 Euro each.
  2. Time Saving – It will take less than 1 hour to follow the guide.
  3. No Recurring Fees – This is possible on the free subscription of Linktree.
  4. Infinitely Reusable – The Tag can be read and written hundreds of thousands of times.
  5. Always Accessible – Your Tag and, by extension, the business card will be with you wherever you go.
  6. Modern Solution – Gets you into people’s contact books immediately.
  7. Touch Free – There is no physical touching required, NFC works through the air.
  8. Sustainable and Digital – No paper wastage, no plastic wastage, no running out of cards.
  9. Placeable Anywhere – Why stop at your phone? Place them on a Trade Show Stand

 

What you will Need to Get Started (Shopping List)

  1. An iPhone 7 or above or an NFC-enabled Android phone
  2. A Linktree account. Available through: www.Linktr.ee
  3. An NFC Tag (In the format you desire) With an NTAG Type 2 based chip such as the NTAG210 or NTAG 213 Link: NFC NTAG Disks or NFC NTAG PVC Cards
  4. An NFC App for writing data to the NFC Tags from an App Store, such as: NXP TagWriter or NFC Tools

 

Background

NFC Tags are renowned for their versatility in home automation applications, like not letting you turn off your alarm clock on your phone unless you scan the tag you place next to the coffee machine in your kitchen. But they also have a broad application of uses outside of your home as well. Allowing you to share digital contact cards, Share Wi-Fi passwords, link to Google reviews or TripAdvisor for your business, and many more.

Some Important Points to note

  1. Ideally when writing an NFC Tag for use on IOS it is best to use an iPhone to write the tag as it will include the appropriate NDEF data so that the iPhone can passively read the tag.
  2. iPhones have more security in what tag types can be scanned passively, whereas most Android phones will read any NFC Tag.
  3. Only specific NFC Tags will work with IOS passively. Any NTAG Type 2 chip will fit this requirement in the fact that they will be scanned without opening any other application to read them. IOS can scan most NFC Tags through a Tag reader app.
  4. Android will be able to passively scan an NFC Tag with a VCard loaded directly onto it, But you will need to procure an NFC Tag with sufficiently large storage capacity, Whereas IOS will not.
  5. Currently, IOS will permit passive scanning of NFC Tags with NDEF encoded HTTPS:// Hyperlinks. This is the method we will be using.
  6. NTAG Type 2 Chips do come in fairly small storage capacities when compared to Mifare Ultralights or 1K Tags. But this is why we will be utilising a fantastic website called Linktree.

 

The Method

1. Order some NFC Tags – for phones I recommend the stickers, these are also great for other purposes around the house and can be stuck anywhere. NFC NTAG Disks or NFC NTAG PVC Cards

2. Next register for Linktree and get your social links setup.

a. Linkedin

b. Personal Website

c. Contact Card (If you want someone to be able to add your details to your phone)

c. Other social links as required

 

3. Install NXP TagWriter or NFC Tools from the App Store

4. From your finished Linktree site, copy down your URL by going to Share > Copy URL

5. Now comes the time to work with the NFC Tag. Open the NFC writing app. Go to the “Write” option to write to the tag and select “URL”

6. Type in the URL which we took note of earlier. Hit OK

7. Prepare to write the data entry onto the Tag.

8. Select write and approach the blank NFC Tag. A successful write will show a Tick.

9. Your Tag is now written and ready to go!

10. If you want, you can optionally password-protect the tags if you intend to distribute them for team use.

11. Stick the Tag to the bottom back of the phone, and make sure when it’s adhered to the phone doesn’t accidentally read the Tag itself.

The End Result