Customs comprehensively promotes the barcode application of cross-border e-commerce commodities, did you know?

With the continuous development of intelligent search, 'scan code' has become a necessity in our daily life. I believe that when you shop in the supermarket, most of you need to scan a string of characters on the product package to identify the product for settlement. This is GTIN , commonly known as 'commodity barcode'.At present, GTIN is widely used and has covered hundreds of millions of retail products around the world, including food and beverage, nutrition and health care, digital home appliances, books, audio-visual products, etc., which is equivalent to 'ID card' and 'passport' of goods Widely used in 115 countries and regions around the worldapplication.

In order to promote the healthy and orderly development of the cross-border e-commerce industry, since February 10, the barcode application of cross-border e-commerce retail imported goods has been fully promoted and implemented in the national customs.

According to different code-issuing institutions and purposes, there are various systems of 'commodity identification code' in the world, and the GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) currently promoted and applied by the customs is the most widely used 'commodity identification code' in the retail field '.

GTIN is a digital symbol used to identify trade items. Different commodities are given a separate GTIN, which can be regarded as an ID number for commodity circulation. It can not only realize automatic recognition by machines, but also can be recognized by human eyes, which is simple, convenient and applicable , a wide range of applications.

The International Article Numbering Organization (GS1) is the code-issuing organization of GTIN.GS1 was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Brussels.In 1988, the State Bureau of Technical Supervision, together with the State Science and Technology Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, approved by the State Council, established the China Article Numbering Center, which is affiliated to the State Administration for Market Regulation and is responsible for the unified organization, coordination, and management of China's GTIN.

GTIN follows a top-down distribution rule, and its uniqueness principle is the basic principle of GTIN, and it is also the most important principle, requiring that different commodities must be assigned different GTIN codes.The stability principle emphasizes that once the GTIN code is assigned, it should remain unchanged as long as the basic characteristics of the product do not change. Even if the product is discontinued, the GTIN code should not be used for other products within 4 years.The meaningless principle means that the GTIN code is only used for identification and has no specific meaning.

GTIN is mainly composed of 8-14 digits of Arabic numerals and is generally used on retail product packaging.GTIN has four encoding rules of 8-bit, 12-bit, 13-bit, and 14-bit at the same time, including EAN-8, UPC-A, UPC-C, ITF-14, 128 code and other names. See the figure below for the relevant coding specifications.

my country is not the first country to develop GTIN application.As early as 2004, the World Customs Organization has carried out GTIN application research.From 2004 to 2016, the customs of the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, New Zealand and other countries selected wine, toys, poultry, beef and other industries to carry out GTIN application.

In recent years, with the continuous deepening of the application of GTIN in the customs of various countries, the degree of automation of customs in commodity management has been continuously improved. Based on the GS1 standard, big data, remote information processing and cloud technology technology have significantly improved the customs commodity management and customs clearance convenience of the application country. level and effectively promote the process of global trade facilitation.

The retail attributes of cross-border e-commerce retail imports are more in line with GTIN. According to statistics, GTIN covers about 90% of cross-border e-commerce retail imports. It has a good foundation for GTIN applications in the field of cross-border e-commerce .

GTIN integrates the functions of coding, printing, identification, data collection and processing, etc. The application of GTIN can improve the efficiency in the transaction and transportation links and increase the trust of consumers.At present, many well-known cross-border e-commerce platforms in China are using GTIN for product management and logistics distribution, and even GTIN has become a necessary condition for entering some cross-border e-commerce platforms.Through the implementation of GTIN management, cross-border e-commerce platforms can not only allow consumers to quickly and accurately find products, reduce search time, increase store traffic, and improve user shopping experience, but also realize intelligence in warehousing and logistics through the convenient reading of GTIN. Sorting, fast delivery.At the same time, by actively displaying GTIN to consumers, cross-border e-commerce companies can enable consumers to understand product information more accurately and completely, thereby improving product reputation and product quality credibility.With the development of customs GTIN application and the continuous application of relevant credit management measures, the degree of trade facilitation for enterprises will be further enhanced.

Cross-border e-commerce enterprises should accurately fill in the 'barcode' information in the body of the list in accordance with the message requirements of the 'Customs Cross-border Unified System Enterprise Docking Message Specification (Trial)' (General Administration of Customs Announcement No. 113 of 2018) :

In order to effectively help enterprises improve the standardization rate of declaration, 'Single Window' sets up GTIN logic verification to verify whether the 'barcode' information in the declaration list conforms to GTIN rules in real time, and the non-standard data will be reported to the enterprise in the message receipt. be prompted.

Consumers can query GTIN information through the official website of GS1, and can query: enterprise information such as the name and address of the manufacturer, basic commodity information such as product brand, name, specification, model, and use, logistics information such as weight and packaging, and product composition , pictures, certificates and other extended information.