What Is an NFC Review Card and How Does It Actually Work?
You have probably tapped your phone on something this week. A transit gate, a card reader, the lock on a hotel door. The chip doing that work costs a few cents and it is the same chip inside an NFC review card.
The card sits on your counter. A customer holds their phone near it. Their screen lights up with your Google review page, already open, ready for a star rating. Nothing to type, nothing to search for, no app.
What is inside the card
A thin antenna coil and a tiny chip, laminated into a plastic card the size of a business card or a postcard. The chip holds one thing: a web link. When a phone comes within a couple of centimetres, the phone powers the chip through the air, reads the link, and offers to open it.
There is no battery. Nothing to charge, nothing that runs out. A card programmed today will still open the same page in ten years.
Which phones can tap it
- Every iPhone since the XS (2018) reads NFC tags with no setup. Hold the top edge of the phone near the card and a banner slides down
- Nearly every Android phone sold in the last eight years has NFC. On some it is switched off by default, which is why a good card also carries a QR code
- The QR code is the fallback. Anyone with a camera app can scan it, so the card never leaves a customer stuck
In practice, around nine out of ten customers will tap and the rest will scan. Either way they land on the same page.
Where the card should live
Where the job ends. That is the rule.
- A cafe or shop: next to the card reader, since the customer is already holding their phone
- A salon or barber: at the front desk where they pay, angled toward the customer's side
- Trades and mobile work: in the folder with the invoice, or handed over with the keys
- A clinic: at checkout, not the waiting room. Nobody reviews a business before the appointment
Cards that get tucked behind a till or stuck to a wall at knee height collect dust. Put it in the customer's eyeline, in the thirty seconds they are standing still.
The one thing that breaks it
A metal surface. NFC needs the antenna in the card to talk to the antenna in the phone, and a steel counter sits between them like a wall. Cards on stainless steel, on top of a metal till, or laid flat on a metal display case will not read.
The fix is boring: a small acrylic stand, a wooden block, or a spot on the wooden part of the counter. Anything that lifts the card off the metal by even a few millimetres works.
NFC card or QR code, which one
Both, on the same card. The QR code alone asks the customer to open their camera, hold steady, wait for the link to appear, then tap it. Four steps. The NFC tap is one motion and the page is open before they have finished reaching across the counter.
Fewer steps means more reviews get finished. That is the whole point of the card.
What to say when you slide it over
"If you have ten seconds, tap your phone on this and it will open our Google page. Even one line helps a small shop like ours."
Say it once, while they are happy, and let the card do the rest.
Tapcards are NFC review cards with a QR code printed on the back. They arrive programmed to your Google review page and work straight out of the envelope.
See the card designs