How NFC Google review cards work

If you have seen a small card sitting next to a till that says "tap here to review us", you have seen an NFC review card. Here is exactly what is happening when a customer taps it, and what these cards can and cannot do for your business.

What an NFC review card actually is

NFC stands for Near Field Communication. It is the same short-range technology that lets you pay by tapping your card or phone on an EFTPOS terminal.

An NFC review card is a plastic or metal card with a tiny chip inside it. That chip has been programmed with one piece of information: the web address of your Google review page. When a customer holds their phone within a few centimetres of the card, the phone reads that address and opens it.

That is the entire mechanism. There is no app, no account, and no battery. The chip is passive, meaning it draws the small amount of power it needs from the phone itself. The card will still work in five years sitting in a drawer.

What happens when a customer taps

1. The customer holds their phone near the card, usually the top third of the back of the phone.
2. A notification appears on screen showing a link.
3. They tap the notification, and their browser opens your Google review page.
4. The star rating and comment box are already there, with your business name at the top.

The whole thing takes a few seconds. Compare that to the alternative: asking a customer to open Google, type your business name correctly, find you among similar results, scroll to the reviews section and tap through. Most people will not bother, not because they are unhappy, but because it is a small amount of friction at a moment when they are trying to leave.

Does it work on iPhone and Android?

iPhone: iPhones from the iPhone 7 onwards can read NFC tags. On the iPhone XS and newer, it happens in the background automatically, so the customer simply taps and a notification appears. On the iPhone 7 and 8, it needs to be triggered from the control centre, which in practice means those users will use the QR code instead.

Android: Most Android phones made in the last several years support NFC. The one catch is that NFC can be switched off in the phone's settings, and some budget handsets do not include it at all.

In everyday use, the large majority of customers can tap. But because you cannot control which phone walks through your door, every card should also carry a QR code.

Why the QR code matters more than people think

A QR code is the safety net. Any smartphone with a camera can scan one, going back well over a decade of devices. It also gives customers a choice, and some people simply prefer scanning to tapping.

If you are comparing suppliers and one of them sells a card with no printed QR code, that is a genuine limitation rather than a design decision.

Where businesses actually put them

• At the counter or till, where the customer is already stopped and paying.
• On a stand rather than flat on the bench, because a card lying face up gets covered by receipts and eftpos machines within a week.
• In the hand, passed across by a staff member with a sentence. This works better than anything else, and we will come back to why.
• At each station for barbers, salons and clinics, so the person who did the work is the one who asks.
• In the vehicle for trades and mobile services, tapped at the point of handover.

What NFC review cards cannot do

This is where a lot of businesses are sold a false expectation, so it is worth being blunt.

• They will not generate reviews on their own. A card sitting silently on a counter gets used by a very small number of people. The card removes friction, but a person still has to ask.
• They do not filter or screen customers. Anyone who taps can leave any rating. This is by design and it is what keeps the practice legitimate.
• They will not fix an underlying service problem. Making it easier to leave a review when customers are unhappy simply makes that unhappiness more visible, faster.
• They do not guarantee a ranking improvement. Reviews are one signal among many in local search. Nobody can honestly promise a position on Google.

Staying on the right side of Google

Using a card to make reviewing easier is entirely permitted. Google's policies target a different set of behaviours:

• Review gating, where you screen customers first and only send the happy ones to Google. This is prohibited, and services that offer it as a feature are selling you a risk.
• Incentives, such as offering a discount or entry into a draw in exchange for a review.
• Writing reviews for customers, or asking staff and family to post them.

The safe version is simple: offer the card to every customer, in the same way, and let them say what they think. A profile built that way is also more convincing to the people reading it, because a wall of identical five star reviews posted in one week reads as exactly what it is.

What good looks like in practice

The businesses that get results from review cards tend to do four things:

1. They ask at the right moment, immediately after the service is finished and the customer is visibly happy, not by email three days later.
2. They have a sentence ready. Something like "if you have got a second, it really helps us if you tap this" works far better than leaving it to chance.
3. Everyone on the team does it, not just the owner, because it only becomes habit when it is part of the routine.
4. They reply to reviews, which encourages more of them and shows prospective customers that a real person is paying attention.

If you would like to see how this works for your business, we set up a review card, a QR code and a direct review link at no cost for eligible Australian businesses. You can also read how to get more Google reviews for the process side of it.