What does an NFC business card deployment cost?
The cards are the line everyone quotes and rarely the largest one. The page behind them, the encoding work and the eventual reprint are what decide whether a deployment is affordable, and all three are missing from most comparisons you will be shown.
The lines that make it up
The cards themselves, priced per unit and falling with quantity. This is the line every quote leads with.
The design and printing, which is the same cost a paper card would have carried.
The encoding, which is either an afternoon of your time or a supplier service, and which is close to free if the chips mirror their identifier and expensive if they do not.
The page behind the cards, whether that is a platform subscription, a page on your own site, or someone's time building one.
And the domain, if you sensibly use your own, which is small and easy to overlook.
The forgotten ones
Verification. Reading every card before distribution takes time and prevents handing someone a card that does nothing.
The reprint, when a title changes, a person joins, or the design ages. Cards are consumables and a deployment that assumes otherwise is underbudgeted.
The fallback. A printed address costs nothing, and a redesign to accommodate one after the fact costs a print run.
And your own attention. Someone has to own this, and in a small company that is a real cost even though it never appears on a quote.
What recurs
This is where the two designs separate sharply.
Cards holding a link on your own domain recur only when people or designs change. The page can be updated indefinitely at no additional cost per card.
Cards on a platform subscription recur monthly or annually, for as long as the cards are in circulation. Stopping the subscription can mean every card ever handed out stops working.
That is not an argument against platforms, which do real work. It is an argument for knowing which of the two you are buying, because the total looks very different over three years.
Comparing offers honestly
Ask what happens if you stop paying. The answer separates a product from a dependency.
Ask whether the address is on your domain or theirs, since that decides whether the cards survive a change of provider.
Ask what the chip is and whether it mirrors, because that is the difference between one write and a hundred.
And cost three years rather than the first order. A cheap first run on an expensive dependency is the shape most comparisons hide.
Frequently asked questions
Are NFC cards more expensive than paper?
Per unit yes, and the useful comparison is against what they replace over time. A card that stays current avoids the reprint a paper card needs.
Is a subscription platform worth it?
It does real work and it is a recurring cost tied to cards already in circulation. Ask what happens to those cards if you stop paying.
What is the cheapest workable setup?
Basic Type 2 cards, one identical write with a mirrored identifier, a page on your own domain, and a printed address as the fallback.
How much should I budget for reprints?
Enough for the churn you actually have. Titles and people change more often than most plans assume.