627 at the start of a barcode does not mean the product was made in Kuwait

The first three digits of the common 13-digit product barcode are the “GS1 prefix”. 627 belongs to GS1 Kuwait, the Kuwaiti office of the international organisation that hands out barcode numbers to companies.

What the prefix does not tell you is where the product was made. The GS1 General Specifications say the company prefix makes the number unique worldwide but does not identify the origin of the item. The prefix follows the office that licensed the company’s numbers, not the factory the box came from. For country of origin, read the “Made in” line on the pack.

Prefixes around the region

• 627 Kuwait, 628 Saudi Arabia, 629 UAE, 630 Qatar, 608 Bahrain, 607 Oman.
• 622 Egypt, 625 Jordan, 890 India, and 680–681 and 690–699 China.
• A 12-digit American barcode carries an implied leading zero, so its prefix reads as 0xx.

Prefixes that aren’t about a country

• 978 and 979: books, where the barcode is the ISBN itself.
• 977: serial publications such as magazines (ISSN).
• 200–299: numbers for restricted use within a region, including the labels shops print for goods they weigh and price themselves.
• 952: reserved for demonstrations and examples.

The last digit checks the rest

The 13th digit is a check digit calculated from the 12 before it, so it catches typing mistakes when a number is keyed in by hand. Multiply the digits from the left alternately by 1 and 3, add the results, and subtract the last digit of the total from 10.

An example using the demonstration prefix 952: the digits 952012345678 sum to 102 after weighting. The last digit is 2, so the check digit is 10 − 2 = 8, giving 9520123456788. If the total ends in zero, the check digit is zero.

Who owns the number

GS1’s Verified by GS1 service answers three questions: is the number properly structured, was it actually issued by GS1, and which company is it licensed to. That is as much as a barcode itself can tell you.

Photo: barcode bars under a macro lens. By Frettie, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: GS1, GS1 Company Prefix table, the GS1 General Specifications (definition of the company prefix) and the Verified by GS1 page, read 29 October 2026.