How a TapX card works

What is actually on the chip, what a tap does, and what the card can never leak.

Inside every TapX card is a small NFC chip. It has no battery. A phone held nearby powers it for a moment, reads what’s on it, and that’s the entire conversation.

What is on the chip

One short web address, and nothing else:

https://tapx.sg/c/K7M4P2QA

That’s it. Your name isn’t on the chip. Your phone number isn’t on the chip. If you lose the card, whoever picks it up learns nothing from it that they couldn’t learn by tapping it — and by then you can have switched it off.

What happens on a tap

The phone opens that address. TapX looks up the card, sees where it currently points, and sends the phone there. The whole hop takes a moment and the person tapping sees only the destination page.

What a tap records

That this card was tapped, and when.
A rough location, worked out from the network the phone is on. In Singapore that is usually accurate to the country and no further — it will not tell you which building you were in. More about that below.

A tap does not record who tapped, their phone number, or anything from their device. The only way you learn who someone is, is if they choose to tell you through the form on your profile.

About tap locations

Both competitors show “where a card was tapped” and it is worth knowing how thin that is: it comes from the internet address of the phone, which in Singapore usually resolves to “Singapore” and nothing more precise. TapX shows taps over time honestly rather than dressing up a country as a venue. Event mode — where you name an event and every lead captured during it is tagged to it — is the reliable version of that, and is planned.

What the card cannot do

It can’t be read from across a room. NFC works at about four centimetres.
It can’t be copied by someone photographing it, though the link itself is not a secret — it’s meant to be opened.
It can’t catch a virus or run anything on the phone. It hands over an address; the phone decides what to do with it.

Still stuck? Email hello@tapx.sg and a person will answer.