Facing Identification Mark

The Facing Identification Mark is a bar code format used by the United States Postal Service. Unlike the Intelligent Mail barcode or POSTNET code, it does not encode the specific recipient or sender of the mail. Rather, it is pre-printed near the upper right corner of a reply envelope (as printed and sent by businesses seeking a reply to an ad, invoice, etc.) to help mail-sorting machinery determine the proper orientation of a mail piece for address-scanning and cancellation, as well as to distinguish between several different types of reply envelope which differ in postage-collection and sorting.

The bar code carries a set of bits (1 or 0) encoded by the presence (1) or absence (0) of a bar at a given position. There are nine bits in all in a code. This would allow 512 (29) possible values, but in practice only four codes are currently in use:


 * FIM A: 110010011 - Reply mail requiring stamp or meter (Courtesy Reply Mail), with POSTNET bar code
 * FIM B: 101101101 - Business Reply Mail (postpaid), without POSTNET bar code
 * FIM C: 110101011 - Business Reply Mail (postpaid), with POSTNET bar code
 * FIM D: 111010111 - Information-Based Indicia postage (uses PDF417 or Data Matrix bar code)

Standards documents

 * USPS standards document describing bar codes and other mail standards

Other links

 * Wikipedia article
 * Obtaining Facing Identification Mark (for Courtesy Reply Mail)
 * Info on Facing Identification Marks