CardMunch: LinkedIn Buys the iPhone Business Card App

Editor’s note: This post was first published on ShoutEx in February 2011, shortly after LinkedIn acquired CardMunch. This post was last updated in October 2026.

LinkedIn has bought CardMunch, the iPhone app that turns a photo of a business card into a contact record. The deal was announced on January 26, 2011. The price was not disclosed. For anyone who comes home from a conference with a pocket full of cards, it is the most useful thing LinkedIn has done in a while.

What CardMunch does

You take a photo of a business card with your iPhone. Instead of relying only on optical character recognition, which still struggles with logos, odd fonts and glossy card stock, CardMunch sends the image to human transcribers through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A few minutes later the card comes back as a clean contact: name, title, company, phone and email, ready to save to your address book.

Before the acquisition, the app cost $2.99 and each card after the first ten cost 25 cents to transcribe. LinkedIn has made the service free.

Why LinkedIn bought it

LinkedIn’s value is its network of professional connections. Business cards are where many of those connections start, and most of them never make it online. CardMunch closes that gap. Scan a card, see the person’s LinkedIn profile and send an invitation to connect while you still remember the conversation.

For LinkedIn, every scanned card is a potential new connection on its network. For users, it is a faster way to follow up. Both sides win, which is why making the app free makes sense.

What it means for business users

• Follow-up gets faster. Scan cards in the taxi after a meeting and the contacts are ready before you reach your desk.
• Accuracy is better than OCR alone. Human transcription handles the cards that scanning apps get wrong.
• Your network grows where it matters. Connecting on LinkedIn the same day keeps the relationship warm.
• Privacy is worth a thought. Card images are seen by transcribers. Check you are comfortable with that for sensitive contacts.

For sales and marketing teams, the lesson is bigger than one app. The contacts you collect at events are only useful if they reach your CRM quickly and someone follows up. Treat every card as a lead with a next step, not a souvenir.

Update: what happened to CardMunch

LinkedIn kept CardMunch running for three more years. In May 2014 it announced a partnership with Evernote, which took over business card scanning, and CardMunch shut down on July 11, 2014. Evernote’s version used OCR and linked each card to the person’s LinkedIn profile. CardMunch users got two years of free scanning in Evernote.

The idea outlived the app. Turning a conversation into a contact, a contact into a lead, and a lead into a follow-up is still how B2B pipeline starts.

Related ShoutEx guides

If you are turning event contacts and LinkedIn connections into pipeline today, these guides cover the current tools and tactics:

• LinkedIn Ads for B2B, including LinkedIn ad targeting and lead gen forms versus landing pages.
• Lead scoring and routing, so new contacts reach the right person quickly.
• Lead qualification for SaaS, to decide which contacts deserve a sales follow-up.
• Account-based marketing, for turning the people you meet into target accounts.

Sources

• TechCrunch (January 26, 2011): LinkedIn buys business card converter CardMunch, will offer its services for free.
• TechCrunch (May 7, 2014): LinkedIn gives up the ghost on CardMunch, inks deal with Evernote to migrate users.