QR Code vCard Explained
vCard is a standardized plain-text format for contact information (name, phone, email, company, website) that phones already know how to read — encoding one into a QR code means scanning it offers to save those details directly into contacts, with no app or account needed.
Because vCard is an open, decades-old standard rather than a proprietary format, it works identically across iPhone and Android without any special app — the native contacts-save prompt appears automatically after scanning. This is what powers the "Contact" content type in most QR generators, including this one.
A vCard is really just a small block of specifically formatted plain text, fields like `FN:` (full name), `TEL:` (phone), `EMAIL:`, `ORG:` (company) and `URL:` (website) each on their own line, wrapped in a `BEGIN:VCARD` / `END:VCARD` header and footer. When a QR generator offers a "Contact" preset, it's building this text block from the fields you fill in, then encoding that exact text into the QR code, same as it would encode any other plain text or URL.
Because the format itself is a published, vendor-neutral standard (not owned by Apple, Google, or any single company), it has stayed compatible across decades of phone operating system updates, and there's no risk of it becoming unsupported the way a proprietary format might. This is part of why vCard QR codes remain a reliable, low-friction way to share contact details even as everything else about phones has changed.
One practical limit worth knowing: vCard supports a fixed set of standard fields, so unusual or highly custom contact information (multiple job titles, several physical addresses, custom social handles) may not map cleanly onto it. For those cases, encoding a URL to a fuller online profile or link-in-bio page, rather than a vCard directly, can represent that information more completely, at the cost of needing a connection at scan time.