How to scan business cards into your iPhone contacts, with or without an app

Yes. The iPhone Camera’s Live Text reads the text on a card so you can copy each detail into a new contact, and a scanner app reads the whole card into one contact at once.

Paper cards haven’t gone away. Even if you hand out a digital card yourself, people will keep handing you printed ones, as the comparison of paper and digital cards explains. This guide covers both ways of getting them into your iPhone: the free method already built into the Camera, and what a scanner app adds when the pile gets bigger.

The Live Text steps below follow Apple’s iPhone User Guide for iOS 27, as published on 24 September 2026. We haven’t re-photographed them for this post, and menus can shift between iOS versions.

Open Camera, point it at the card until a yellow frame appears around the text, and tap the Live Text button. Then touch and hold a detail, copy it, and paste it into a new contact in the Contacts app.

1. 01

   Open Camera

   The ordinary Camera app. No download needed.
2. 02

   Frame the card

   Hold the phone so the card’s text sits inside the camera frame, until a yellow frame appears around the detected text.
3. 03

   Tap the Live Text button

   Apple’s guide shows it as the Live Text icon, available once text is detected.
4. 04

   Copy a detail

   Touch and hold the text, use the grab points to select the name, number or email, and tap Copy.
5. 05

   Paste it into a new contact

   In the Contacts app, create a contact and paste the detail into its field. Repeat for each detail on the card.

Apple’s guide to Live Text in the Camera describes these steps, and adds quick actions at the bottom of the screen for some kinds of text, such as calling a number, starting an email or visiting a website. Creating the contact itself follows Apple’s guide to Contacts. Apple notes that Live Text isn’t available in every region or language.

Live Text works one detail at a time: you still type or paste the name, title and company yourself. It files no tags or notes and keeps no image of the card. It’s fine for one card, slow for twenty.

None of that is a flaw in Live Text; it was built to read any text, not to understand a business card. It doesn’t know which line is the name and which is the company, so the sorting is up to you. For the occasional card it is the right tool: free, and already on your phone.

Open the Scan tab and photograph the card. The text is read on your phone and sorted into name, title, company, numbers, email and website. You check it on a review screen, add tags, and save.

1. 01

   Open the Scan tab

   In the Ravencard app on your iPhone.
2. 02

   Photograph the card

   Flat, filling the frame, without glare.
3. 03

   Check the fields

   The review screen shows what was read, sorted into name, title, company, numbers, email and website. Correct anything that is wrong. Nothing is stored until you confirm.
4. 04

   Add a tag and a note

   Where you met, and what you talked about, while you still remember.
5. 05

   Save

   The contact is filed in your Ravencard contacts, with the image of the card.

Try it on the next card you are handed: 5 scans are included on the free plan. See how scanning works.

Not to read it. Reading happens on the phone (Apple Vision); when you save, the contact syncs to your account, together with the photo of the card, so it survives a lost phone.

The recognition itself uses Apple’s Vision framework, which reads text in images on the device, and the lines are sorted into fields on the phone too. Saving is a separate step: the contact, its tags and notes, and the photo of the card are stored in your Ravencard account so that they come back when you sign in on a new phone. Nothing is stored until you confirm on the review screen.

Scanning is good on clean, printed cards and weaker on script fonts, low light or busy designs, so always check the review screen before saving. Lay the card flat, fill the frame and avoid glare.

Those three tips come from our own support page, and they cover most misreads. Script typefaces, embossed or foil lettering, and very small print are the usual trouble; the review screen is there so a misread costs you a few seconds rather than a wrong contact.

In Ravencard, open the contact and push it into your phone book with one tap. With Live Text, you paste each detail into a new contact yourself.

Keeping scanned people in Ravencard, and pushing them to the phone book only when you want to, leaves your address book for the people you actually call, while the rest stay searchable and tagged in the app.

Give each contact a tag for where you met (an event, a client, a city) so you can filter later, and search by name or company. Ravencard’s Contacts tab does this; Apple’s own Contacts can group people into lists.

Scanning is only half the job; the point is finding the person again in three months. A tag for where you met is the most useful thing you can add, because it is how you will remember them: “the architect from the Tokyo trip”, not “Kenji something”.

In Ravencard, the Contacts tab holds everyone you have scanned, searchable and filterable by tag. In Apple’s own Contacts you can group people into lists on iCloud.com, which is the nearest equivalent.

For the odd card, Live Text is free and built in. For regular scanning, compare how many scans each free plan allows and whether it includes tags and search.

We make one of these apps, so we won’t declare a winner. Here is what each free plan offers, taken from each provider’s own pricing page.

Plans change, so check the page before you choose. Beyond the number of scans, the questions worth asking are whether the app sorts the fields for you, whether you can tag and search, and where your contacts are stored.

Scan the QR code instead. If it opens a digital card, save the contact from there, photo included if the card supports it.

A QR code on a card usually leads somewhere more current than the paper. If it opens a digital business card, its Save button hands your phone a complete contact, and a well-made one includes the person’s photo. Why that photo sometimes goes missing is explained in a QR code that saves your contact, with your photo.

Keep it if you might want the original; otherwise recycle it. The details are now in your phone, and in Ravencard the image of the card is saved with the contact.

Scan them within a day, while you still remember the conversation, and add a tag and a note about where you met. A card you can’t find is as good as lost.

The details on a card are the easy part. What you lose after a week is the context: who they were, what you talked about, what you promised to send. A tag and one line of notes, added the same evening, keep that.

Ravencard’s scanner asks Apple’s text recognition for English and Turkish. We haven’t checked other languages, so we don’t promise them.

If you regularly receive cards in another language, try a few with the free scans before relying on it, and check the review screen carefully. Apple’s own Live Text has its own regional and language availability.