It’s 2025, but business cards are still in vogue — just visit any conference or industry expo and you’ll end up with a pile that’s likely to be discarded sooner than later. But as smartphones have become our repositories of information and contacts, people are understandably keen to try out digital alternatives to business cards.
Blinq, a startup out of Melbourne, bet that trend would take off when it started off as a hobby project in 2017, offering a digital business card app with a QR-code widget. Today, the company is making off with a bag of gold: It now has more than 2.5 million users — both individual customers and across 500,000 companies in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia.
Off the back of that progress, the startup has now raised a $25 million Series A funding round led by Touring Capital. Returning backers Blackbird Ventures and Square Peg Capital also participated in the round, as did new investor HubSpot Ventures.
“[The Blinq’s QR] was a simple, personal way to share who you are, and it worked well between iPhone users. But it wasn’t until late 2019 when most Android devices caught up on QR scanning, and adoption started to grow,” Jerrod Webb, CEO and founder of Blinq, told TechCrunch. “Then came COVID — QR codes went mainstream, in-person meetings became more intentional, and Blinq’s focus on making those moments seamless and memorable started to take off.”
The startup has taken the B2C2B route ever since. The app lets users create several customized digital business cards for different needs and connect with contacts using them. The app can also automatically capture details and sync them with CRM systems such as HubSpot or Salesforce by using QR codes, email signatures, NFCs, short links, or video call backgrounds.
Blinq is used by individuals, small businesses, and global enterprises, and 80% …