The digital card itself: no fixed size
A digital business card is a web page. When someone scans your code, the card opens in their phone’s browser and rearranges itself to fit that screen — a small Android phone or a large iPhone, portrait or landscape. There is no canvas size to design to. Anyone telling you to make your digital card “1050 × 600 pixels” is describing a picture of a paper card, not a digital one.
What you do control is the size of the images on the card.
- Profile photo. Upload a square image, ideally at least twice the size it appears on screen, so it stays sharp on high-density phone displays.
- Logo. An SVG, or a PNG with a transparent background, avoids a white box around it on coloured headers.
- Cover or banner images. Keep the important part in the middle, because phones of different widths crop the edges differently.
Printed cards: standard dimensions
If your digital card goes on paper — usually as a QR code on a printed card — the paper has real dimensions, and they vary by country.
| Region | Size (in) | Size (mm) | Print pixels at 300 DPI |
|---|---|---|---|
| US and Canada | 3.5 × 2 | 88.9 × 50.8 | 1050 × 600 |
| UK and most of Europe | 3.35 × 2.17 | 85 × 55 | 1004 × 650 |
| Japan | 3.58 × 2.17 | 91 × 55 | 1075 × 650 |
| Australia and New Zealand | 3.54 × 2.17 | 90 × 55 | 1063 × 650 |
| Credit-card format (ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1), common for PVC and NFC cards | 3.37 × 2.13 | 85.60 × 53.98 | 1011 × 638 |
Three print terms matter more than the table.
Trim, bleed and safe zone
- Trim size is the finished card — the numbers in the table above.
- Bleed is extra artwork outside the trim, often 0.125 in (3 mm) a side, so no white edge shows if the cut is slightly off. A US card with bleed is 3.75 × 2.25 in, or 1125 × 675 px at 300 DPI. Check your printer’s spec; some ask for 2 mm or 5 mm.
- Safe zone is a margin inside the trim, typically about the same width, where nothing important should sit. Keep the QR code inside it — a code clipped by the cut will not scan.
The QR code: how big to print it
This is the measurement that decides whether the card works. There is no universal minimum size that guarantees a scan: whether a code reads depends on how much data it holds, the camera, the lighting and the distance. What holds in practice:
- Short codes scan smaller. A QR code holding a short link has fewer, larger modules — the small squares — than one holding a full contact file, so it reads reliably at a smaller print size. A link to a digital card is much shorter than the contact details it replaces.
- Distance matters. A common rule of thumb is that a code can be read from about ten times its own width: a 2 cm code from roughly 20 cm away. That suits a card held in someone’s hand. A code on a booth banner read from across an aisle needs to be far larger.
- The quiet zone is part of the size. The QR standard, ISO/IEC 18004, calls for a blank border four modules wide on every side. Text, edges or a busy background crowding the code is a common reason a code fails.
- Contrast beats colour. Dark modules on a light background. Light-on-dark and low-contrast brand colours fail more often, especially in dim rooms.
QRBold’s downloaded QR image is cropped close to the code, so leave the white border in your print layout rather than assuming the file includes it.
The only reliable test is a real one: print a proof at actual size and scan it with two or three different phones, including an older one, at the distance people will really hold it. More on making the QR code scan reliably.
Email signatures and screens
A QR code in an email signature is usually the wrong choice: most people read email on the same phone they would need to scan with. Put your card’s link in the signature as text or a small button instead, and keep the QR code for places where the reader is holding something else — paper, a badge, a slide on a screen.
If you put a QR code on a slide or a video call background, size it so it fills a meaningful part of the frame. A code that looks large on your monitor can be tiny once it is compressed into someone else’s video window.