Paperless office’. The idea is novel, but the chance of businesses and offices running 100% without paper is very slim. Yes, we can cut down on wasting paper and digitize much of what happens on an average day. However, something as simple as a business card proves that paper is still here to stay. This is still the quickest, most effective way to give or receive personal information.

However, receiving a business card carries the risk of you dropping it in your pocket or drawer, right? If you don’t want to waste time looking for those details ever again, you need the tool that combines the best of paper and technology: Business card scanners.

Thanks to the innovative use of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology, you can capture all information via your Smartphone camera, save it and retrieve it for future use.

Within professional career and business networking environments, many people still exchange physical contact cards. But then storing and securing them takes a little bit of manual work. That’s where the best business card scanner apps come in.

Even in today’s business world where paper documents are being eliminated without worry, business cards still play an important role. For one good reason, this type of card seems to be the quickest way to exchange contacts especially in those contexts where people may be in a hurry.

If you choose the option of storing paper based cards in the long term, you may not realize the loss of the contact detail until the moment you’ll need it. Certainly, nobody will like to lose their sanity when the full detail of important contact information is lost as a result of moisture or aging.

Whether you are using Android or iOS device, you are bound to find one of the best business card scanner apps.

Within this category of scanner apps, some are free while others come with specific price tag. And in most cases, the price usually starts from $5 upwards.

To pick your ideal business card scanner app ask yourself these questions:

• Does it save it in a format I can use?
• Will it cater for the language/s I operate in?
• Will I use the features I pay for?

For the most user friendly options on the market today, we suggest you pick from the list of some of the best business card scanner apps below.

CamCard – Business Card Scanner App for iPhone

We start off with an app specifically designed for iOS. Unfortunately, Android users can’t use it, but its features are impressive enough to place it first on our list. This includes scanning business cards, but also updating information such as when a contact has a promotion or moves to a different company. All of this can happen automatically. Use this data to optimize your networking processes.

Despite its many features CamCard is surprisingly user friendly too.

Haystack

Why stop at improving how you capture information? What about enhancing how you share your own? The Haystack app empowers you to market your brand more effectively by creating templates on the app. Now you can share your information via a range of file types such as vCard or VCF. Bonus: The person receiving your digital business card doesn’t need the app to open it.

When it comes to scanning others’ information the app allows unlimited scans and a free version is available.

ScanBizCards Best for Events

This is one of those impressive allrounder packages. ScanBizCards by CircleBack firstly works in 21 different languages and it makes it easy to scan, use & export data. You can even use automated introduction emails (with your VCard) to make sure your new business contact doesn’t forget who you are either.

A nifty feature is that you can scan both sides of the card and page through them. Just note that this is an app exclusive to iPhone and not all services are free.

Office Lens Best for CRM Integration

For those of you that don’t want a unique app for each aspect of your work life, Office Lens from Microsoft can scan other documents too: Use one tool to digitize everything related to your business.

Note that it’s not the best when it comes to CRM integration or manual transcription support, but its accuracy is impressive. That means fewer mistakes compared to some other apps.

Business Card Reader

Engage easily with your global audience by using apps like Business Card Reader that can identify contact information in 25 different languages. The technology is advanced enough that it will complete some information automatically such as postal codes. Any unusual characters are marked so you can edit if necessary.

There is a free version but it has limited functionality. It’s worth investing in a premium package for unlimited scans, backups and easy export features.

If you have an Apple Watch you can make calls directly from this platform.

WorldCard Mobile – For Android and iOS

This app can handle high volumes and it’s a user friendly platform. If you don’t want to waste time on getting to know complicated software, this is a good option.

It works for both Android and iOS which not all these featured apps can say. It’s also compatible with 25 languages—pretty impressive! Sharing options include iTunes File Sharing and Open IN.

Unfortunately, it has quite limited functionality for an app you must pay for.

Wantedly People – Free Business Card Scanner App

So, what do you do if you’re at a conference and meet a whole group of potential business partners? You’ll have more time to engage and network if you use Wantedly People, since it can scan all of their cards at once.

This tech is so advanced that it will discern the cards from one another and extract the information from each. You can scan up to 10 at a time. It’s also handy for secretaries that need to update client or partner information after an employer comes back from multiple meetings. Tech should help everyone save some time.

Of course, the best news is that the app is free.

Evernote

You’ll find Evernote on many different ‘Top 10’ lists because it has so many features. And yes, it can even save your business card data. If you already use this app it means you don’t have to get to know another app; just utilize this feature. Just note that it saves it to the Evernote files.

Here’s the ultimate in smart tech: This app will keep the information updated by scanning contacts’ changes on LinkedIn profiles.

FoxCard

This is unfortunately not for everyone as it’s an iOS supported app. You also have to pay $1.99 or more if you want all the benefits of the premium version.

However, we still rate it as one of the best ones as it’s easy to add your own images or notes to the card. It’s a sensible feature if you network with many people on a daily basis and can’t risk forgetting important details about them. This one also recognizes nine different languages—not the best in the business, but still impressive.

CardHQ

It’s not the best on the market yet, but you can get this app without paying anything. That doesn’t mean it’s low in quality: It’s bound to impress with how much it can do an how quick it works. It only takes three seconds to scan a card. The technology is advanced enough to ensure a high level of accuracy and you can scan multiple cards at once.

Full Contact

This one is available for web, iOS and android platforms. First you’ll need to create an account through any of the platforms you choose. And then you can connect it to contact apps like Google GSuite. After doing this, you can start taking photos of the cards.

For easy organization and accessibility, you’ll have to add tags or notes that describe each of the contacts. This will make it easy to recognize individuals and the context of using each of the contacts in your app.

Depending on the type of card, you may choose to scan the front and back side of the card.

From there, Full Contact will merge the content with your address book.

Sansan

One of the things that make Sansan outstanding is the ability to scan from smartphone and desktop. Moreover, Sansan makes use of optical character recognition (OCR) software as well as human reviewers to ensure 100% accuracy of contact details. After scanning, the cards will be organized into a database and made accessible from anywhere.

From inside the app, anyone with access can choose to email or call the contacts. Another interesting is the feature to share contact details with other relevant business apps in the categories of email, CRMs and address books. This can be done via an API.

With availability in multiple languages like English, Chinese, German, French, Korean and Japanese, the premium plan which starts at $600/per month can scan up to 500 cards. The free plan gives you 100 scans only.

ABBYY Business Card Reader – Easy Salesforce Integration

One important factor that buyers of business related apps and software so much is compatibility with the tools they are already using. In a mobile context for example, some people are likely to be searching specifically for the ‘best business card scanner app for android’. Obviously, this is not an accidental search.

Following that same line, people that use Salesforce CRM are very likely to be interested scanner apps that support seamless Salesforce exports.

In addition to that, it is also worth noting that this particular app is available for iOS and android users alike. With a colorful user interface, you can rotate the scanned cards into landscape as you like.

CurcleBack

Have you been looking for the best business card scanner app for iPhone? CircleBack is one good option you should give serious consideration. In the event of any duplicate contacts, this app makes it very easy to merge and update contacts. For people that often get new email contacts, you can as well extract the full contact details and store them accordingly.

With this scanner app for iOS, you may as well choose to export contacts to Salesforce or any other compatible CRM. CircleBack is free for iPhone users.

Switchit

Switchit makes receiving and sharing business contacts very easy for iOS users. Unlike other competing apps in the same category, you can even use this one to create new digital business cards with graphics and images. Among other features, Switchit is integrated to work with calendar tools like Outlook and iCloud. Within the list of your contacts, you’ll also have direct call and messaging options to get instantly in touch with anyone you choose.

Acquainted

To get started with Acquainted, you’ll need a phone number. And it integrates perfectly well to almost any of the popular CRM solutions you can think of. Unlike some other apps, the contacts created within this app can even be shared with non users of the same app. Sharing with non users can be done via SMS, email or QR code. With this app, you might as well do away with scanning entirely as some users have confessed.

One peculiar area where this business card app works well is with LinkedIn. Storing, sharing and managing business contacts can now be done without any form of manual work at all.

BizConnect

With BizConnect, capturing business card details just got easier. Through my research findings, one thing that keeps being resounded by past users is the ease of capturing even hand written notes. This app reads and digitizes business contact details with 100% clarity and accuracy.

And it is available for android users with compatible devices. Depending on your choice, you can use this one do batch scanning of up to 10 cards at once.

Zero Keyboard For Salesforce

For people working in very large organizations or sales teams, here is another app that takes team collaboration and access into account. Just as the name sounds, this app was built specifically to make management and updating contacts within Salesforce to be seamless and stress free.

With Zero Keyboard, you’ll have all you want to manage contacts, leads, schedules and proposals. Based on past user experiences this one is confirmed to deliver impressive level of speed and simplicity. Possibly, you can begin to save good amount of time with it.

CardKeeper

Looking for the best business card scanner app, CardKeeper enables users to scan, store, search and manage business contacts from physical card of all sizes. Through Airdrop, you can share the business cards with whoever you choose. Available on Apple’s App Store, this app was built to work with slick user interface. For easy accessibility, you can sort the cards based on alphabetical order or date received. In terms of price, business card scanner app is free to download.

Scanbot

If you are one of those business people or experts love with apps that have clean user interfaces, Scanbot got you covered. While you can with the free version, they also offer premium in-app purchase versions that make discovery of relevant contacts to happen almost instantly.

From $5 to $9.99, you’ll get support for Touch ID, OCR, folders, custom naming and themes. While trying to capture card or other document details this app will give you on screen directive tips that make it possible to get the best output.

Conclusion

From our research, these are the best and top rated business card scanner apps in 2019. And from the list, you are sure of finding perfectly affordable options to choose from. And if you don’t want to make full commitment in terms of premium version, most of these apps have free trial versions you can test to see what the output looks like.

Yes, you can use your Smartphone’s camera and capture normal images of business cards. But what then? You’ll have to retrieve an image and type in contact details manually if you ever need to use it. So, cut down on manual work, get a business card scanner app and make your life easier. It’s what technology is all about.