16 Countries Now Certified for New S42 International Addressing Standard

Postal services for 16 countries have now been certified for a new international addressing standard that will improve the deliverability rate of their mail and increase their postal efficiencies. That’s great news for business mailers who send letters and parcels into these countries, which are listed below.

The S42 mailing address standard was developed by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in an effort to benefit both the postal services for individual countries, as well as international business mailers.

This new international addressing standard is made up of a generic list of address elements – used in all UPU member countries – and country specific templates that tell users how to transform these address elements into an accurately formatted address. The result is an address that is recognized, and easily processed, by any S42 compliant postal service.

The benefits of the S42 addressing standard for a postal service include reduced operating costs, faster mail processing (both international and domestic), simplified database management and better data quality.

International business mailers will benefit by getting higher deliverability rates, faster mail delivery, postage savings and improved data quality due to better information from an S42 approved postal service.

Following is a list of the countries whose national postal services have been approved as S42 compliant.

Current S42 Compliant Countries
Australia
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Morocco (French & Arabic)
Netherlands
New Zealand
Portugal
South Africa
United Kingdom
United States of America
Venezuela

In addition to the 16 countries that have already been certified, there are 10 more currently in the process.

Countries With S42 Templates Under Development
Albania
Czech Republic
Japan
Mexico
Poland
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland

---Source: Bob Hull is the director of business development for Melissa Data (www.melissadata.com). He can be reached at bob@melissadata.com.