The business card comes of age, with NFC business cards from Martin Print

Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark

So spoke Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, in a scene where the subject of the perfect business card appears to drive the protagonist of the film to a seemingly incoherent rage – an early show of what is to come. Nearly thirty years later, the business card is still with us, but it’s about time it got an update – something that Martin Print, a Western Australia based custom printing service run by Martin Russell is trying to do with their new NFC Business Cards.

Martin Print offer a range of custom printed products, from your run of the mill office needs such as envelopes and business cards through to more advanced merchandising such as stubby holders and NFC Keyrings. But it’s the NFC based business cards I found intriguing when I recently saw them offering a deal to receive a single custom printed plastic NFC business card for the price of the postage. Intrigued by this new concept, I ordered one – in fact I ordered three.

It’s a new concept, so Martin Print was running a brief test run. The test run was for 1000 NFC business cards, offered to Australian small businesses. Unfortunately this extremely popular offer has come to an end, with Martin Print exceeding the 1000 Free NFC Cards they originally planned. But the offer will be back, if you place your order on their website, you can will receive your cards as soon as they begin again.

To get your order under way, you submit the artwork for your new business card in a variety of forms (PDF, EPS, High res Tiff, JPEG or Flattened PSD file) or they can design the artwork for you. With your details on the front you may also want to consider those without an NFC reader and include a QR code on the back of your card, to make transferring your details a little easier. Martin Print get you to proof your order before having it printed – a nice touch.

The NFC Business Cards themselves are 0.8mm thick, making them a little thicker than a credit card and are made of PVC. Embedded in the plastic card is an NXP NTAG203 NFC Chip, which capable of storing up to 142 bytes of data. The cards themselves can be pre-programmed for a fee, or arrive blank, ready for you to program with your NFC enabled smartphone (sorry iOS fans), with apps like NXP Tagwriter.

You can wait for the trial packs to begin again, or if you’re completely sold on the idea, you can of course jump straight in and place an order. But, the cards aren’t cheap. 50 basic un-programmed cards, with no embellishments will cost you $288, but if you really want to appease your inner Patrick Bateman, Martin Print offer options to add metallic foil to the edging or metallic lettering to your card to really make them pop.

I have yet to give away any of my NFC business cards, I actually like them too much so far. But the important thing is that the cards work well on all the Android and Windows Phone handsets that scanned them. I programmed them with a VCF card, and when scanned a prompt comes up to save my details to the address book.

I’ve had business cards in many of the jobs I’ve held throughout my working life. I still have the traditional cardboard ones to give away when needed, but the NFC business card certainly makes an impression when you show it to people. If you need to update your business cards, I really recommend you check out these NFC business cards from Martin Print.