EAN-13 & UPC-A Barcodes

We supply both EAN-13 (International Article Number) and UPC-A (Universal Product Code) formats of our GTINs in every one of our packages. EAN-13 & UPC-A are merely two formats of barcodes, the EAN-13 being a superset of UPC-A, meaning the vertical lines/symbology are the same.  Both formats are visually and numerically identical and recognised worldwide by scanning software.

What is the difference between EAN-13 and UPC-A?

The main point of difference is that habitually the USA and Canada use the UPC-A format and the rest of the world including India, Europe and the UK use the EAN-13 format. When choosing your image we suggest that you consider your target region and select the most widely used format for that region however both are recognised globally.

Example of an EAN-13 version. 13 digits reading 0784927299562.
UPC-A version. 12 digits reading 784927299562.

NOTE: We have had some rare cases of mis-scanning due to scanning software used by one of our customer’s retailers dropping the leading zero of the code. If your retailer is having problems scanning the EAN-13 format code then please tell them to update their system to use the 12 digit UPC-A format instead – this should solve the scanning issue. Similarly, if the scanner is not scanning the UPC-A format, advise your retailer to update the information to use the 13 digit EAN-13 format.