Business card scanning has been a core focus for our contact management app since inception. We spend so much time (and money) on business cards, why not make as much use of them as possible? Through your smartphone camera and the FullContact app, you can ensure your business cards won’t end up in a metaphorical paper graveyard at the bottom of your book bag. In this post, we’ll cover how to store business cards, when we find ourselves typically storing them, and why you should use the FullContact app to manage these.

How to Scan & Save business Cards from Your Phone

1. Install & sign in to the FullContact app on your iOS or Android device.
2. Navigate to ‘Business Cards’ from the main menu.
3. Click the camera icon to take a photo of a card or upload a card photo you previously captured.
4. Once you have uploaded image(s) of the card, add notes and tags to the specific contact. Hit save.
5. You’re all set! Cards take typically 30 minutes to transcribe and verify. They will show up in your address book once complete.

Select Use Cases

We have found it’s particularly helpful to have the iOS or Android app installed for quick scanning opportunities during these types of occurrences:

Conferences & Conventions: If you’re like us, you leave a conference invigorated and excited to reconnect with attendees you have met. But, how do you keep track of the cards you receive from fellow attendees? We recommend setting aside a few minutes post-conference to scan all of the cards you collect to make sure everyone is added to your address book. To make sure you have context about each person, add a tag with the conference name, so you can use that as a conversation point when following-up later on.

Meetings & On-the-Go: How many times have you showed up to a client or prospect meeting, left with a handful of business cards, and stuffed them in your pocket? Make sure you don’t lose these valuable contacts and keep the cards in a secure space (aka the cloud). If you already have these folks in your FullContact address book, you’ll be able to merge the business card information with their existing contact profile to create a more well-rounded view of who you’re working with.

FullContact Card Reader Vs. Other Card Readers

There are a ton of great apps out there that make scanning and storing physical information a breeze. When it comes to business card storage specifically, we find our app to be unique for the following reasons:

• When you use FullContact for card scanning, real people transcribe the card  – yes, actual humans – before it is added to your cloud address book.
• You can automate your business card scan tasks with Zapier integrations across most beloved apps. Check out some of our Zapier recipes.
• We’ll add a “smart tag” to each card you scan, so you can filter out contacts added from business cards.
• Cards can also be uploaded in bulk via our web application.
• Scan both one-sided and two-sided business cards.
• Premium subscribers get 1,000 card scans annually (basic subscribers get 10 total).