How to Scan a Business Card Into Your iPhone Contacts
Getting a card into your iPhone is easy. Getting it in *properly* — with the mobile number labelled Mobile, the company in the Company field, and the job title where a job title belongs — is the part most shortcuts skip. Here's how the whole trip works, and exactly which card line ends up in which Contacts field.
The scan-to-contact path
- Point your iPhone at the card. Edges are found and the perspective straightened automatically, so a card shot at an angle across a table still reads.
- Recognition runs on the phone and splits the text into fields — name, title, company, phone(s), email(s), website, address.
- Read the review screen with the photo right there above the fields. Anything misread gets fixed by tapping the field itself — no separate edit screen, no menus.
- Save the card to your library.
- Tap Save to Contacts. iOS asks for Contacts permission the first time; after that the card lands in your address book with the fields mapped as below.
Which card line goes where
Card field → iPhone Contacts field
| On the card | In Contacts | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Name | First name / Last name | Split at the final space — 'Maya Ortiz' → Maya / Ortiz; compound surnames are worth a glance before saving |
| Job title | Job Title | Kept as printed |
| Company | Company | All-caps logo lines are tidied to title case |
| Mobile number | Mobile | Labelled from the card's own 'M', 'Mob' or 'Cell' marker |
| Office number | Work | From 'T', 'Tel', 'Office', 'Direct' or 'Work' |
| Fax number | Work Fax | From 'F' or 'Fax' — kept, not silently dropped |
| Unlabelled number | Main | No guessing when the card gives no hint |
| Work email | Every address on the card, not just the first | |
| Website | Work URL | Stored without the https:// prefix |
| Street address | Work address | Detected as an address, not glued onto the company name |
The phone-label detail nobody handles
Business cards mark their numbers with a single letter and a dot: `M. 415 555 0142 · T. 415 555 0100 · F. 415 555 0101`. Read that badly and your address book fills up with fax numbers labelled Mobile — which you discover at the worst moment, mid-call.
The label is read from the text immediately before each number, and a bare letter only counts when it stands alone (so the `m` in *Maya* never turns a number into a mobile). When a card gives no marker at all, the number is saved as Main rather than guessed into the wrong slot.
Saving to Contacts writes one card at a time, on purpose — your address book is the last place you want a bulk import of half-read rows. For moving many cards at once, export a vCard file instead and let Contacts import it in one go.
If you'd rather keep them out of your address book
Not every card belongs in your contacts. A conference badge scan you'll never call is clutter, and clutter is how address books stop being trustworthy.
Cards live in the app's own library either way, searchable by name or company, with the original photo kept. You decide which ones graduate to Contacts — and you can export the rest as a spreadsheet or a vCard file whenever you want them elsewhere.
Frequently asked questions
Can the iPhone scan a business card into Contacts by itself?
Not as a single step. iOS can select text in a photo and detect a phone number you tap, but it doesn't sort a card into name, company, title and labelled numbers for you. That sorting is what a card scanner adds — see the full rundown of what iOS does natively.
Does the phone number keep its label?
Yes — mobile, office and fax markers printed on the card become Mobile, Work and Work Fax in Contacts. Unmarked numbers are saved as Main rather than guessed.
What if a field is read wrong?
Tap it on the review screen and type over it. The original photo stays on screen while you do, so you're correcting against the card, not from memory. Cards already saved stay editable forever.
Can I add several cards to Contacts at once?
Export a vCard (.vcf) file with the cards you want and open it — iOS offers to add all the contacts in the file in one step.
Does this work without a signal?
Yes. Recognition happens on the iPhone, so scanning and saving work in airplane mode, in a basement conference hall, or on a plane home.