UPC Code

UPC Barcode

If a company wants to put a barcode on a trade item that can be scanned at any retail point of sale anywhere in the world, they need an EAN/UPC barcode.

UPC Code Standards

The GS1 EAN/UPC barcode is the longest-established and most widely used GS1 Data Carrier. It is an indispensable product-marking method that is found on virtually every consumer product in the world. That little “beep” that people associate with the checkout of a supermarket is a laser scanning device reading the information encoded in an EAN/UPC barcode.

UPC Code Types

There are four primary EAN/UPC barcode types, and all are linear symbologies.

• EAN-13 which encodes GTIN-13
• UPC-A which encodes GTIN-12
• EAN-8 which encodes GTIN-8
• UPC-E which encodes a special “zero-suppressed” GTIN-12

EAN/UPC does not encode any other GS1 ID Key or any other GS1 Application Identifier.

There are two supplementary EAN/UPC barcodes called the 2-digit and 5-digit add-on codes whose use is limited almost exclusively to books and periodicals.

UPC Code Advantages

Besides its global ubiquity, the other great advantage of the EAN/UPC barcode is its omnidirectional scanning capability: an EAN/UPC barcode can be passed in front of a bar code reader at a point of sale right-side-up or upside-down, and it will still “beep” properly. This makes it a quick and efficient data carrier for high-volume scanning situations like supermarket cash registers.