Somebody picks up the card on your counter, holds their phone near it, and a page opens. No app store, no typing, no hunting for a barcode at the right angle. It looks like magic. It is actually one of the simplest pieces of technology you can put in front of a customer, and once you understand the three things that happen during a tap you can explain it to any member of your team in a single sentence.
The tap is the whole interaction
A tap is not a button press and it is not a scan. There is no line of sight to line up, no camera involved, no illuminated square on the screen. The customer simply brings the phone close to the card and holds it there for about a second. If the phone is unlocked and NFC is switched on, everything else happens on its own. That is the entire gesture: pick up, hold, wait a beat, watch the screen change.
Because there is nothing to aim, the gesture works in the places where a scan does not. A customer holding a bag, a coffee, or a child does not have to put anything down to tap. That single detail is why tap cards and table stands have become so common at busy counters and on café tables, where hands are full and patience is short.
Where the power comes from
The chip inside the card has no battery. It never needs charging and it never runs flat. Instead, the phone itself creates a small electromagnetic field around its NFC antenna, and when a card enters that field the field feeds the chip. The chip wakes up, reads what it has stored, and answers back through the same field.
This is also why the read distance is short. Our chips typically read at 2 to 5 cm, which is roughly the width of a finger. A short range is a feature rather than a limitation. It means the card reacts when someone deliberately holds a phone against it, and stays quiet when a phone is merely nearby in a pocket or bag.
Inside the chip: a small amount of memory holding a link
The chip is a tiny memory store. All a review card really needs to hold is a web address. When the chip answers the phone, it hands over that address, and the phone opens it in the browser the phone already has. The range we work with includes NTAG213 with 144 bytes of user memory, NTAG215 with 504 bytes, and NTAG216 with 888 bytes. A single link fits comfortably in even the smallest of those, and you can read more about matching a chip to a job on our guide page.
What the phone does with what it reads
The phone recognises the chip as an NFC Type 2 tag operating at 13.56 MHz and following the ISO/IEC 14443A standard. It reads a short record containing your link, then follows the ordinary rules it follows for any link: it opens the default browser and loads the page. Nothing is installed, nothing is stored on the customer's phone, and nothing is left behind afterwards except the page itself.
If you use a dynamic QR code instead of, or alongside, the chip, the destination lives on our side and the code points at it. That is the difference between a static link written into the chip and a dynamic one you can redirect later without reprinting anything. Both start from the same tap. You can compare the two on the dynamic QR page.
Why "no app" is the point
Every extra step between a customer and your review page costs you reviews. Asking someone to install an app is the largest step you can add. Most phones read our tags with no app installed at all, which means the customer goes straight from tap to page. The fewer taps and installs standing in the way, the more people finish what they started. Our products are built around that single idea.
If you are weighing up a tap card against other options, the honest answer is that it depends on where the card will live and who will be holding it. We are happy to talk through your setup and suggest a format that fits. Message us on WhatsApp at +86 151 0247 7198 or email nina@cwtape.com with a quick description of your counter, table, or shop front, and we will point you in the right direction.