On October 30, CB Insights published a CEO interview with AnimaNext in its Executive Interviews series. They asked how we define our market and where we fit in it. The line they chose to put at the top was this one:
Most competitors assume the future is fully digital, but some people still value the physical card, and that's why we're giving the physical card as well.
The full interview is on CB Insights. This post is about what that sentence means for you if you are choosing a digital business card right now.
Many digital cards give the other person a task
A lot of this category lives inside an app. You open it, find your QR code, turn the phone around, and wait while the other person opens their camera, frames the code and taps the link. It works. It also turns a two second exchange into a small task for someone you met thirty seconds ago.
Paper never asked for that. You held out a card and the other person took it. A good digital card should keep that part and fix the rest, which is everything that happens after the meeting: details that go out of date, cards that get typed in wrong or never get typed in at all.
What you actually get
AnimaNext is three things that all open the same page.
The card is matte black with our mark debossed into it and nothing else printed on it. Inside is an NFC chip with a short web address. When it touches the back of a phone, the phone opens that address in its browser. There is no battery to charge and no app on either side.
The profile is the page the card opens. Your name, title, company, photo and links, on one layout made to read well on a phone, with a Save contact button that drops you into their address book. You can change it whenever you like, and every card you have already handed out opens the new version.
The Wallet pass lives in Apple Wallet on your own phone. It shows your name and a QR code. If you left the card at home, or the person in front of you has NFC switched off, you show the pass and they scan it.
Why the card and not only the pass
We tried to make the Wallet pass tappable, phone to phone. It cannot be done. Apple only lets NFC passes talk to certified readers, the kind at a station gate or a payment terminal, and a stranger's phone is not one of them. So the pass carries a QR code, and the card stays the thing you tap.
Handing someone an object is also a different gesture from turning your screen toward them. In Japan, where we build AnimaNext, the card exchange still matters as a moment of its own. We wrote about that in what a digital card has to respect to work in Japan. Handing over a card fits that moment, which is part of why we kept one.
When each one does the job
Tap the card in person, when you are standing with someone and want them to have your details before the conversation moves on. Show the Wallet pass when you do not have the card on you, or when a tap does not read. The profile address works too: you can say it out loud or send it as a link after a call.
Whichever one you use, the profile is the same page. So before you hand any of them to a stranger, spend a minute on what belongs on the profile.
The card is $20, paid once, with no subscription. It ships from Tokyo, and the other person never has to install anything.