NFC stands for Near Field Communication: the same technology you use to pay for coffee with your phone. In a business card, the chip sends a radio signal over a very short distance — a few centimetres — when a phone comes close. There is nothing to switch on and nothing to pair: the distance is the gesture.
What actually happens in those three seconds
The phone comes close, its magnetic field powers the chip, the chip answers with an address, the operating system shows a notification. Whoever taps it opens your page: name, role, phone, website, social links, and the button to save you to contacts. That's it. No app to install, no account to create, no QR code to line up while the camera hunts for focus.
Nothing needs downloading — not by you, not by the person receiving the card. iOS and Android have handled NFC natively for years: it is the operating system reading the chip, not a program someone has to already have.
iPhone: from which model onwards
From iPhone XR and iPhone XS onwards reading happens by itself when you bring the phone close: the NFC reader stays active in the background, a notification appears at the top of the screen, one tap and you are in the profile — the case where the gesture feels like magic, because there is no preliminary step at all. On iPhone 7, 8 and X reading works, but the NFC reader has to be switched on from Control Center before you bring the phone close.
Android: since 2015, often with the screen off
It works on practically every NFC-equipped Android device made from 2015 onwards. The only condition is that NFC is enabled in settings, which it usually already is. Many models read the chip even with the screen off.
Together, iPhone and Android cover over 95% of the phones in circulation in Italy. Only the oldest models fall outside — and it is worth knowing up front, because it is the one real limit of this technology.
What is physically written on the chip
You can write a URL, a Linktree profile, an online vCard, or contact details directly in vCard format. The chip inside a Wood·Touch card is an NTAG216: 888 bytes of memory, rewritable over 100,000 times, compatible with every modern NFC standard. We configure all of it before delivery, so the card arrives working.
Why in practice you never rewrite it
This is where a card designed as a product differs from an NFC tag bought online. We put a stable address on the chip, not your data: when your number, site or role changes you do not touch the chip — you update the page from the dashboard and the change is live immediately. No reprint, no tag to rewrite, no box of outdated cards to throw away. It is also why the chip never wears out: it is written once, by us.
The page itself is built from blocks — contacts, WhatsApp, social, PDF, reviews, lead capture — and can be reordered whenever you like. If the data side interests you, the dashboard measures how many taps arrive, when and from where.
The chip lives inside the wood
In a Wood·Touch card the chip is not glued to the back: it sits in the middle layer, between two layers of wood with crossed grain. You cannot see it, you cannot feel it, and it cannot come off. It is also shielded against interference, so it answers even resting on a metal surface — the situation where cheap NFC tags simply fail.
The chip has no battery: it draws power from the phone's field only in the instant of reading, and between taps it uses nothing. There is nothing that can run flat.
The same chip, on something that does not move
The same technology works mounted on a fixed object — a totem at a reception desk, in a shop or at an event — where the person making the gesture is not you but the visitor. If you are unsure which of the two suits you, the comparison between card and totem starts precisely from who does the tapping.