How to Make an NFC-Equipped PCB Business Card

Business cards today serve a completely different function than they used to. In the past, business cards were a practical way to share your contact information, like the number for your landline phone. But that’s easy to do today electronically. Modern business cards are simply a means for impressing people, which means you need to really stand out. By following Loann Boudin’s tutorial, you can do that with an NFC-equipped PCB business card.

The idea here is to combine functionality with a little extra “wow” appeal. That “wow” factor comes from both the minimalist design, and the simple fact that it’s more than just another paper business card that’s going to get immediately thrown in the trash. The functionality comes from the built-in NFC chip, which people can use to pull up whatever data you stored, such as your website, social media profiles (in Boudin’s case, LinkedIn), favorite brownie recipe — whatever you want to share.

To create this, you’re going to need a surface-mount NFC chip, LED, resistor, and capacitor, as well as some soldering skill. Loboat will walk you through how to design the PCB in Autodesk EAGLE, including the NFC antenna. Because they’re small, these PCBs should cost less than a dollar each to have fabricated professionally. Once you receive your PCBs, you just need to solder on the components and copy the data you want to the NFC chip. Hand them out at the next conference you attend, and people may actually hold onto them!