How close a phone gets to the card, and whether NFC is even turned on, decide it too.
A card on a counter is usually one body carrying both technologies at once, a QR code and an NFC chip, because that is how nearly every supplier in the market builds it. The real question is not which one to pick, it is whether the chip half can actually be trusted where the card will sit.
The answer depends on neither price nor brand, but on the counter itself: the metal in it, how close a phone gets, and whether the guest even has NFC turned on. The summary above says where it breaks; the rest of this page says why, with numbers checked against actual suppliers.
A guest scans a QR code with a phone camera, gets offered the link, and that is it. Every phone with a camera reads it, smart or old.
NFC reads differently. The guest just holds the phone near the card, and the phone reads the chip and opens whatever address is written into it. But the phone needs NFC turned on, close enough to the card, and some people leave it off in settings without knowing.
Cheaper card batches sometimes carry a Fudan F08 chip instead of a real NTAG, since it is a clone sold at a fraction of the price. That chip will not open a link at all when tapped to an iPhone, a risk a batch tested only on one Android will never reveal.
NFC stands for near field, literally. The largest tag checked across suppliers, 38 millimeters across under 3 millimeters of acrylic, reads at 51 to 60 millimeters; a smaller 22 millimeter tag at the same price reads at only about 20 millimeters, meaning the phone has to be nearly touching the card. A QR code reads with a camera that focuses from any reasonable distance, so a guest never has to aim within a fraction of an inch.
On a metal counter, register, or stand, NFC does not work at all, since the metal scrambles the signal. The fix is an anti-metal chip variant, roughly four times the price by the same checked figures, or a spacer that holds the card a couple of inches off the metal. A QR code on that same metal reads without any adjustment at all.
Anybody with a stainless counter or a metal-backed laminate surface will find NFC will not work unmodified, no matter where on it the card sits.
A chip can be locked into read-only mode after manufacturing. An unlocked NTAG213 or NTAG215 chip can be rewritten with a phone, free, in about ten seconds. Once locked, though, it stays locked forever, and no app or supplier can undo that.
A QR code has it worse, because the choice never exists for it at all. It is ink on plastic, and ink cannot be rewritten whether the code was ever called "locked" or not, since the term does not even apply to printing. A card's destination is permanent the moment it leaves the printer.
Only NFC can offer a second chance, and only if you ask upfront whether the chip ships unlocked. A QR code never gets one.
A chip gets written card by card, so a hundred identical-looking cards can each carry a different address at no extra cost. A QR code prints in one batch instead, and without a special order the whole batch shares one image.
A hundred cards sharing one code means a server cannot tell whether a scan happened at your coffee counter or a hair salon two doors down. Tapping would save the day if the chip carries its own content, but the QR code stays blind, and QR is the fallback for every phone without NFC, so it cannot afford to be blind.
The only fix is printing the QR code variably, a different image on every single piece. It is the one thing worth specifically asking a supplier for, and not every supplier can do it.
No. A QR code is just an image carrying text, in this case a link. Google has no special format for it either: its own help page on the subject is simply titled about creating a link or QR code to request a review, and it hands one out in three steps inside your Business Profile, free, with one limitation.
"Currently, review QR codes can only be generated using a browser on a computer, not on mobile devices."
Google Business Profile Help, read September 14, 2026
A code Google generates and a code from any other generator, fed the same link, lead to the exact same place. The only difference is where the code came from and whether it can still be changed after printing.
A QR code you print yourself costs almost nothing. Anything with a chip inside is always a manufactured object: finished plaques carrying both technologies run in the low single dollars per piece at volume, and blank panels for your own design run even less at bulk order. Price alone does not tell you whether to want NFC, since most finished cards carry it alongside the QR code automatically anyway.
The card sold here carries both, QR code and NFC chip, and both point at our own address rather than straight at Google, so the destination can be redirected anytime regardless of whether the chip is locked. Every card carries its own code, so two counters never get counted as one.
A licence year runs $599, and the card ships as part of that licence rather than priced separately per piece; an extra card for a second counter is $79 a year, on the pricing page.
Before buying anything, read the four supplier questions and the five-card acceptance test on what to check in an NFC card, which apply to a card from anybody. The free process for building a QR code and a link yourself, from a computer, is on the free QR code page, and how a finished card fits into the rest of collecting reviews is on the review card page.
Every citation on this page comes from one of these pages. The link goes to the original source, not to our summary of it.
$599a year, plus $79 for each extra card. See the full price.