Despite it being 2025, business cards remain surprisingly common. Attend any industry event or expo and you’ll likely collect a handful — only for most of them to be forgotten or tossed aside. But as smartphones have become the hub for managing personal and professional connections, digital alternatives to traditional business cards are gaining traction.
Melbourne-based startup Blinq anticipated this shift back in 2017 when it began as a side project, introducing a digital business card app featuring a QR code widget. That bet is now paying off: Blinq has grown to over 2.5 million users, including individuals and employees at 500,000 companies across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.Riding that momentum, Blinq has now secured $25 million in Series A funding, led by Touring Capital, with continued support from Blackbird Ventures and Square Peg Capital, as well as a new investor, HubSpot Ventures.“The original QR-sharing feature was a simple, personal tool — and it worked well for iPhone users,” said Jarrod Webb, Blinq’s CEO and founder, in an interview with TechCrunch. “But mass adoption didn’t really begin until late 2019, when most Android phones caught up with QR scanning. Then came COVID, which pushed QR codes into the mainstream and made in-person interactions more intentional. That’s when Blinq’s vision really started to resonate.”
Since then, Blinq has taken a B2C2B approach — serving individuals while enabling business adoption. The app allows users to create multiple personalized digital cards for different contexts and share them via QR codes, NFCs, email signatures, short URLs, or virtual backgrounds. It also supports automatic syncing with CRM platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce.Today, Blinq’s user base spans from solo professionals to large global companies, with 80% of its customers located in the U.S. Its team has grown from a modest five-person group in Melbourne to 67 employees spread across Sydney, Melbourne, New York, and San Francisco, driving both product development and market expansion.“Every time someone uses Blinq, it’s introduced to someone new,” said Webb. “And we’ve noticed that engagement increases the longer someone uses it. That organic virality has helped us keep our acquisition costs low. On the business side, we operate on a per-seat pricing model. As more team members adopt the app, companies naturally expand their usage.”
Blinq faces competition from players like Mobilo, Popl, Wave, and Wix, as well as broader platforms like LinkedIn and Linktree. But Webb believes Blinq stands out by helping users not just connect, but build and nurture relationships.
“We don’t see digital business cards as a final destination,” Webb said. “They’re just the beginning. If Blinq is the trusted tool used at the moment a connection is made, we can shape what happens next. Our goal is to help users turn introductions into meaningful follow-ups — using rich profiles and smart engagement tools. That means growing into new markets, deepening our reach with businesses, and evolving how people connect in an ever-changing world.”
