Business Cards

This week, I was at a conference. One of the established rituals is to exchange business cards. It never ceases to amaze me that with all the technology at our finger tips, we can’t use them effectively to exchange our contact details. We use to have Bump which had a brief moment of fame before it got “assimilated” by Google and was promptly discontinued. I think it’s a giant missed opportunity by both Google and LinkedIn. Why can’t LinkedIn not just present a QR-code and we can scan it in the app. It can’t be this hard to implement?

Dutch banks and online stores use QR-codes for online payment now. It’s so simple and seamless. When you buy something, you can scan the code with your bank app and you’re done. No username, password or card numbers to exchange. It’s even anonymous like Apple Pay. It really works well and it’s secure.

Business cards are just tokens to connect, everyone’s identity lives on the internet. Why do I have spent an hour going through these cards and save the contact details somewhere where I can use them?