Royal Mail barcode is a type of linear barcode which is used to encode postal information in United Kingdom Postal Services. Royal mail barcode is also known as customer barcode (CBC), UK Postcodes and RM4SCC (Royal Mail 4 State Customer Code). Royal mail barcode is capable of encoding numeric digits from 0-9 and the alphabetical characters from A-Z. Royal Mail barcode was developed between the years 1992-1994.
Structure
Royal mail barcode consists of a series of vertical barcodes. Each character is represented by four bars two of which are extended upward and the remaining two are extended downwards. The structure of Royal Mail Barcode is as follows.
· Start Character
· Encoded Postcode
· Suffix representing the delivery point (DPS)
· Checksum character for security
· Stop Character
Purpose
Purpose of Royal Mail barcode was to develop a barcode standard specifically for UK Postal services, particularly the royal mail. This barcode standard can encode information about the mail or parcel being transferred and the destination address along with customer information.
Advantages
· Royal mail barcode has extremely fast encoding and decoding, very suitable for postal industry.
· Simple encoding/decoding algorithm, no specialized user training is required for this purpose.
· Checksum digit provides self-checking security mechanism.
· Royal mail barcode can be decoded by a simple scanner without any complex hardware.
Limitations
· Royal mail barcode can only encode numeric digits from 0-9 and alphabets from A-Z. It is not capable of encoding special characters.
· Damage and fault tolerance of royal mail barcode is not very high which can lead to inability to decode damaged and distorted barcodes.
· Royal mail barcode cannot store much information in small area which reflects low data density of this barcode.
Usage
Largest user of the Royal Mail barcode, as the name suggest and has been mentioned earlier is, UK Post and Royal Mail postal services who use this barcode on parcels and mails in order to store information related to the postcode and destination where the mail or parcel has to be routed.