ISO/IEC 20248 Explained: Digital Signatures for Barcodes

Most barcodes and RFID tags only store a reference number — they don't prove that number is genuine. ISO/IEC 20248 fixes that by defining a digital signature data structure that fits inside a standard barcode or RFID payload.

In practice, this means a tax stamp or product label can be verified with nothing more than a phone camera and no network connection: the signature is checked against a public key baked into the verifying app, so a counterfeit label fails instantly even in a warehouse with no signal.

Combined with unique identifiers under ISO/IEC 15459 and the data identifiers defined in ISO/IEC 15418, it forms the technical backbone of a serialization scheme that can scale to billions of units without needing a live database lookup for every check — which is exactly what field enforcement teams need, and exactly the kind of standard our Tax Stamp Solution and Neocube are built around.