Simplicity is one thing; efficiency is another. Alphanumeric postal codes are good for one reason, and that is to make the code “easier” for the human eyes to read and understand in ways the numeric postal code can never be.
For example, a numeric code may be combined with a country code to form an alphanumeric code. In this case, the country code is used to avoid confusion especially when sending or receiving international postal mails. Without the country code, the numeric code by itself might not be enough to identify which country the mail was originally intended for (in case the complete address was not legible enough to be read), and this could result to an overall sluggish delivery time or, in the worst case scenario, loss of mail altogether.
An alphanumeric postal code is a postal code syntax that uses a combination of letters and digits to represent an area's postal code. The number of characters in the postal code, however, still largely depends on the country implementing the code.
Apart from the inclusion of the country code in the numeric postal code to form an alphanumeric postal code, some countries still have an alphanumeric postal code even when the country code is excluded from the series. These countries include:
Brunei – Brunei uses an alphanumeric postal code consisting of two prefix letters followed by four digits which are unique to a specific location in Brunei. The first letter refers to the district code, while the second letter refers to the mukim code.
Canada – Canada uses a slightly more complicated syntax than Brunei: the “X9X 9X9” format. Under this syntax, X represents a letter and 9 represents a digit. Even stranger is the H0H 0H0 postal code, a Canadian postal code reserved for sending letters to Santa Claus.
Other countries with alphanumeric postal codes include Venezuela, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Moldova, Malta, Jamaica, Bermuda, Argentina and Andorra.
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