Royal Mail 4-State Customer Code (RM4SCC)
The UK's 4-state postal barcode: bars in four height-tracker combinations, sorting mail with a compact machine-readable postcode line.
Royal Mail 4-State Customer Code (RM4SCC) Specification
| Character set | Alphanumeric (A-Z, 0-9) per Royal Mail convention |
| Data length | Postcode + delivery point suffix (application-defined) |
| Check digit | Checksum characters defined per Royal Mail rules |
| Density | Fixed — four elements per character |
| Module width (X-dimension) | Bar pitch 0.5 mm nominal (postal specification) |
| Print ratio | Four element heights (tracker/ascender/descender/full) |
| Magnification | Royal Mail fixed dimensions |
| Quiet zone | Postal framing rules apply |
| Standard | Royal Mail Cleanmail specification; UPU 4-state family |
| Origin | Royal Mail (UK), 1980 |
Not generated by barcodegen.net
Royal Mail 4-State Customer Code (RM4SCC) is documented here for completeness, but our free generator does not produce this symbology. The closest supported format is Code 128.
What Is Royal Mail 4-State Customer Code (RM4SCC)?
RM4SCC (Royal Mail 4-State Customer Code, also known as CBC) encodes each character as four elements, each one of four "states": tracker (short center bar), ascender, descender, or full bar. Six characters of 4 states give ample combinations for alphanumeric data, and the code appears as the printed dot-dash line on UK mail carrying the postcode plus delivery-point suffix.
Four-state encoding is the international postal family: USPS's Intelligent Mail, Canada Post's PostBar, and Australia Post's 4-state customer barcodes all use the same tracker/ascender/descender principle with different data conventions. Royal Mail's Cleanmail and downstream-access products require it for machine-sorted mail. Postal 4-state codes are printed by mail software with carrier-assigned data, not free-form generators.
Common Applications
- UK machine-sorted mail (Cleanmail / DSA)
- UPU 4-state postal family reference
Related Barcode Types
The US Postal Service's retired height-encoded delivery-point barcode: tall and short bars representing ZIP + delivery point + check digit.
USPS's retired tracking barcode for inbound confirmations — the inverse-height sibling of POSTNET.
Deutsche Post's 12-digit parcel identification barcode, encoded in Interleaved 2 of 5 with Mod 10 check digit.