Everyone else rents you a business card by the month.
Subscription sites lead with the annual rate because the number is smaller. Blinq's card is $7.33 a month if you pay for a year up front, and $9.99 a month if you pay monthly — a 27% difference for the privilege of not committing. HiHello charges $6 either way.
At their monthly rates, a FrictionPass card pays for itself in two months against Blinq and about three months against HiHello. After that you are done paying and they are not.
| Card | Per month | Three years |
|---|---|---|
| FrictionPass | $0 after purchase | $20, once |
| Blinq Premium | $9.99 | $359.64 |
| HiHello Professional | $6.00 | $216.00 |
| Popl | Not published | You have to book a call |
Competitor prices read from their own pricing pages on 11 September 2026, at their monthly-billed rates. Prices change; check theirs.
A card sitting in your wallet costs us nothing to leave there. It is not a seat we are holding open or a server you are renting. The subscription on every other card exists because those companies raised money and owe their investors recurring revenue — not because a business card needs a monthly fee to keep working.
We did not raise money, so we do not owe anyone a subscription. We would rather sell a card once to a lot of people than rent one to a few.
Your card is a real Apple Wallet and Google Wallet pass, held on your phone — not a page on our website. The card in your pocket keeps working.
Yes, they have free plans. HiHello's gives you four cards and five scans a month. Blinq's gives you two cards. A free tier is not a gift, it is a hook — a deliberately partial product, sized to be useful enough to keep and limited enough to make you upgrade. The caps are the product.
Twenty dollars, once, has no upgrade prompt, because there is nothing to upgrade to. Does FrictionPass have any monthly plans? Yes, because some verticals require consistent upkeep. Business cards do not fit that definition.
FrictionPass has no app, on either side. You build your card in a browser. It goes into Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, which is already on your phone. The person you hand it to opens a link.
Our competitors publish iOS and Android apps and lead their home pages with the download buttons. Blinq's own App Store listing describes building your card in the app, and advertises that it is the recipient who is “app-free.”
An app is a download, an account, a password, a permissions prompt and a notification you did not ask for — before you have handed anyone a card.
Change jobs, change your number, change the whole card. Editing is free and it does not expire. There is no plan that unlocks it and no plan that takes it away.
Edit your card and the installed pass refreshes itself.
These are choices, not a roadmap. Every one is something you are paying a monthly fee elsewhere to receive.
You already own a CRM. A second system writing into it is one more integration to configure, permission and debug. We hand you a contact. Where it goes is your business.
There is no account to be provisioned and no password to reset. Your phone is lost or stolen? Find your FrictionPass purchase confirmation email and reinstall.
Other cards advertise AI enrichment, which means inferring a stranger's job title from a database. We show what you typed. Walking into a conference? Switch the card to Basic and it shows only the essentials.
A business card has no business taking notes on a meeting.
That is event lead capture, and it is a different product. Popl's own pricing page leads with an event lead capture plan and will not quote you a price for it.
No tags, no dongles, nothing to reorder.