ABBYY Business Card Reader

ABBYY Business Card Reader is a mobile application from ABBYY, the company best known for its optical character recognition technology, that converts paper business cards into structured digital contacts. The problem it tackles is simple but persistent: professionals collect large numbers of cards at meetings, conferences and trade shows, and retyping the details into a phone or CRM is slow and error-prone, so many contacts are never followed up. The app applies ABBYY’s recognition engine to a photograph of a card, identifying names, job titles, company names, phone numbers, email addresses and postal addresses and placing each item into the correct contact field. Recognition works across a wide range of languages, including cards printed in more than one language, which makes the tool useful for international business travellers and teams that deal with overseas partners and suppliers on a regular basis.

Beyond capture, the app offers batch scanning so several cards can be processed in a single session, automatic cropping and image correction, and the ability to store the original card image alongside the recognised data for reference. Users can add notes, tags and reminders, search their card collection and export contacts to the phone address book, spreadsheets or vCard files. Integration with Salesforce and other CRM systems allows sales professionals to push new leads straight into the pipeline, and business editions add shared administration so a team’s contacts can be centralised rather than scattered across individual devices. The application runs on iOS and Android, making it suitable for sales representatives, recruiters, consultants, event marketers and small business owners who network frequently. A free version with limited functionality is available, together with a free trial of premium features, and paid subscriptions start from around USD 7.99, depending on the plan and billing term chosen.