How to make a digital business card for your Apple Wallet

I’ve noticed a growing number of people are sharing digital business cards, rather than paper ones. It’s a neat idea, but there seem to be many different ways to create electronic cards. The method described here:

• Works on iPhones
• Is free
• Doesn’t require registration or an account
• Includes a QR code that puts your contact details straight into the recipient’s address book
• Uses your corporate brand logo and colours

I hope you find it useful…

Step 1: create your QR code

From a computer (not your phone!), go to this website: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/

Fill in the form as below:

Click Generate.

Save the QR code file somewhere.

Open the QR code so it’s displayed on your screen.

Now you can test your QR code. Point your phone camera at your computer screen and check it works. You should see a notification saying “Add <name> to Contacts…”. Tap the notification and check that you are happy with the contact card data.

Step 2: create your business card

On your phone, get Wallet Creator by at2 GmbH from the App Store 

Open Wallet Creator and tap (+) to create a new card. Recent versions of the Wallet Creator app ask for a Card Type, so you need to select select eventTicket here.

Fill in the form as follows:

• Organisation name: <your company name>
• Header text: <your name>
• Label: <your company name>
• Value: <your job title>

Now tap the (+) symbol and add an Info field

• Label: Email
• Value: <your email address>

Now tap the (+) symbol and add an Info field

• Label: Mobile
• Value: <your mobile number>

Now tap the (+) symbol and add a Barcode

Point your phone camera at the QR code on the screen you made earlier. Your card is now ready for use!

However, before you add it to your wallet you may want to sort out the branding and colours to make it look nice…

Go to your company website and download your company logo (usually right-click on the logo, save image). Save it somewhere you can access easily on your phone (e.g. iCloud Drive on a Mac)

Now get your corporate colours. If you have a marketing team, they should be able to tell you the colour numbers. Ask for the background and text colours in hexadecimal. Alternatively, you can find out the colours yourself: on a Mac, open the “Digital Color Meter” app. On the menu, select View -> Display Values -> as Hexadecimal. Now point your mouse cursor at the colour you want. In this case, I wanted the beige background colour:

Note down the last two digits of each value in order (ignore the “0x”): in this case, the numbers I want are F8F1E8. Now do the same for the text colour. For black text, it will be 000000.

Now go back to the Wallet Creator app on your phone to set the colours. Tap Background and type in the six digits of the background colour you noted earlier. Now do likewise for Values and Label, this time putting in the numbers for your text colour.

Finally, tap the logo symbol in the app (to the left of the Header text box) and select the logo file you saved previously.

When you’re happy with all the details, scroll to the top of the screen and tap Add to Apple Wallet.  

That’s it! You now have an electronic business card in your Apple Wallet. To use it, open your Wallet, and tap on your business card. If you show that card to someone, their phone should import your contact details…

Top tip: add Apple Wallet to your phone Control Centre so it’s easy to access with a single swipe. Go to Settings -> Control Centre -> add Wallet. Now you can get to the Wallet with a simple swipe up (if your iPhone has a home button), or swipe down from the top-right (if you have a newer iPhone without a home button).