It’s 2025, yet business cards remain surprisingly resilient at conferences and industry events, often collecting in piles that swiftly clutter desks and drawers. But as smartphones evolve further into the primary gateway for professional connections, digital alternatives are rapidly gaining traction, aiming to finally render physical cards obsolete.
Melbourne-based startup Blinq foresaw this shift as early as 2017, launching initially as a modest hobby project built around a simple digital business card app featuring QR code integration. Today, the company is thriving, boasting more than 2.5 million users spanning individual consumers and enterprises across the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Capitalizing on its rapid user growth, Blinq has secured a substantial investment: a $25 million Series A funding round recently led by Touring Capital. Existing investors Blackbird Ventures and Square Peg Capital renewed their commitments, alongside fresh funding from HubSpot Ventures.
CEO and founder Jerrod Webb credits Blinq’s early success to timing and shifts in consumer behavior. Initially, their platform gained modest traction when the QR feature resonated primarily with iPhone users; Android devices had yet to broadly adopt seamless QR scanning. This changed dramatically in late 2019, accelerating further with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when QR codes became commonplace. As professional meetings transitioned first largely online and then cautiously back in-person, Blinq’s carefully streamlined, digital-first approach found significant appeal among users seeking safer and more convenient methods of exchanging contact details.
From individual freelancers and boutique businesses to large global corporations, Blinq’s strategy revolves around a ‘B2C2B’ (business-to-consumer-to-business) model. Users can create multiple customized digital cards tailored for specific occasions, easily sharing contact information through QR codes, email signatures, NFC tags, concise URL links, or even integrated video conferencing backgrounds. The app also facilitates seamless CRM integration—automatically transferring captured contact information directly into tools such as Salesforce or HubSpot.
Around 80% of Blinq’s current user base resides in the United States, and since its founding, the company has rapidly expanded in personnel, moving from a small Melbourne-based core of five employees to a vibrant international team of 67 spread across Sydney, Melbourne, New York, and San Francisco. This team now oversees product innovation, strategic scaling, and new-market entry initiatives.
Webb emphasizes that Blinq’s growth relies heavily upon its inherently viral nature. Users automatically present Blinq to potential new adopters simply by sharing their details digitally, organically driving network effects and reducing customer acquisition costs. From a business perspective, companies utilizing Blinq typically pay per user license, resulting in potential expansion revenue as more employees adopt the platform and integrate it into their daily operation.
Despite the company’s momentum, Blinq faces competition from digital business card providers like Mobilo, Popl, Wave, and Wix’s QR-enabled business solutions. However, Webb distinguishes Blinq’s value in its ability to foster meaningful follow-up interactions and sustained relationship building rather than simply digitizing an existing physical product. Additionally, social networking platforms and linking services like LinkedIn and Linktree represent alternative contact-sharing methods but don’t match Blinq’s specialized focus and CRM integration capabilities.
Webb views digital business cards as merely the initial entry point in a much broader mission: “Blinq becomes the trusted interface at the very start of professional connections—it’s our wedge. By genuinely enhancing these meaningful first interactions, we can extend our platform to support deeper relationship-building tools. Our aim is not just to digitize the handshake but to actively enable users and businesses to cultivate lasting relationships, remain top of mind, and adapt at the pace of an ever-evolving professional world.”
