What barcode format is on the back of a US driver's license?

PDF417, a stacked-linear 2-D barcode format defined by ISO/IEC 15438. The data structure inside follows the AAMVA Card Design Standard (CDS), maintained by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

Does the barcode contain my full address?

Yes. Almost every field printed on the front of the license is also encoded in the back barcode: full name, date of birth, address (street, city, state, ZIP), license number, expiration, issue date, sex, height, eye color, and several less obvious flags (organ-donor status, veteran status, REAL ID compliance, under-21 / under-19 / under-18 cutoff dates).

When a bar or club scans my license, what do they actually see?

They see every field above. Their app might only display the age and the photo match, but the underlying scan returns the full record. Many ID-scanning apps log every scan to a server for marketing or compliance audits. There is no standard limit on what they retain.

Is it safe to use this scanner to check my own license?

Yes — and the verdict UI deliberately masks the license number and date of birth behind tap-to-reveal so a screenshot of the verdict isn't itself an identity leak. The scanner runs in your browser; only the decoded text is sent to our server for the safety check, never the image.

What's the difference between this and the mobile driver's license (mDL)?

The mDL (mobile driver's license) is the digital version stored in your phone's Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. It uses a different format (ISO/IEC 18013-5) and is designed for selective disclosure — you can prove you're over 21 without showing your birth date. The PDF417 on a physical card discloses everything at once when scanned.

Standards · AAMVA driver license

What does the barcode on the back of a driver's license say?

Almost every field on the front of the card, plus a few extras. The PDF417 barcode on the back of every US and Canadian driver's license encodes your full name, full address, date of birth, license number, height, weight, eye color, organ-donor flag, veteran flag, REAL ID status, and three different under-age thresholds — all in a single ~500-byte payload that any phone with a PDF417 scanner can read.

Verify your license barcode → All standards →

What's the format

The symbology is PDF417 — a stacked linear barcode defined by ISO/IEC 15438. The data inside follows the AAMVA Card Design Standard (CDS), maintained by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. Every state and Canadian province issues licenses compliant with the same field schema, so a single decoder works across all of them.

The current spec is AAMVA CDS version 09 (most states are on version 02 or 03 — the version is encoded in the header). The data is plain ASCII; each field is a three-letter "data element identifier" followed by the value, terminated by a line feed.

Every field encoded in the back barcode

Per the AAMVA CDS appendix D.12.5, these are the most common fields on every license:

Identity

DAC — first name
DAD — middle name
DCS — last name
DAE — name suffix (Jr / Sr / III)
DAF — name prefix (Dr / Mr / Mrs)
DBB — date of birth (MMDDYYYY for US, YYYYMMDD for Canada)
DBC — sex (1=male, 2=female, 9=unspecified)

Physical description

DAY — eye color (3-letter code: BLU, BRO, GRN, HAZ, BLK, GRY)
DAZ — hair color
DAU — height (e.g. "069 IN" = 5 ft 9 in)
DAW — weight in pounds
DAX — weight in kilograms (Canadian licenses)

License details

DAQ — license / ID number
DCF — document discriminator (per-card unique ID, distinct from license number)
DCA — license class (A / B / C / D / M for motorcycle, etc.)
DCB — restrictions (corrective lenses, daylight-only, etc.)
DCD — endorsements (HazMat, passenger, school bus, etc.)
DBD — issue date
DBA — expiration date
DCG — country (USA or CAN)

Address

DAG — street address line 1
DAH — street address line 2 (apt / suite)
DAI — city
DAJ — state / jurisdiction
DAK — postal code

Special flags

DDA — REAL ID compliance (F=full, N=non-compliant)
DDK — organ donor (1=yes, 0=no)
DDL — veteran (1=yes, 0=no)
DDJ — under-21 until (date when holder turns 21)
DDI — under-19 until
DDH — under-18 until
DCL — race / ethnicity (when state issues it)

Issuer metadata

Issuer IIN — 6-digit issuer identification number (encodes the state DMV)
AAMVA version — schema version number
DDB — card revision date
DDC — HazMat endorsement expiration

What happens when a bar or club scans your license

Their reader returns all of the above in milliseconds. The app's display may only show the age and a green checkmark — but the underlying scan returned the entire record. What the venue does next depends on their software:

Best case: the app verifies age locally, displays nothing more, retains nothing. Some apps do this.
Common case: the app logs every scan to a cloud server "for compliance" — name, DOB, license number, full address, timestamp. Retained for years, sometimes shared with third parties.
Worst case: the venue uses a marketing platform that explicitly resells the scan data. This is documented in privacy policies of several venue-management SaaS products.

There is no US federal law restricting what bars and clubs can retain from a license scan. State laws vary; some (Texas, New Hampshire) have begun to restrict retention. Most do not.

What our scanner surfaces, and what's masked

Visible by default

First name, middle name, last name, sex, height, eye color, hair color, address, state, country, license class, restrictions, endorsements, issue date, expiration date, organ-donor flag, veteran flag, under-age cutoffs, issuer IIN, AAMVA version, card revision date.

Sensitive (tap-to-reveal)

License / ID number and date of birth are masked behind the same tap-to-reveal component we use for passwords and 2FA secrets. A screenshot of the verdict UI without tapping the reveal button doesn't leak either. The masking is a UX safety net — these are PII fields that often get re-used as out-of-band identity proofs.

Why scan your own license here?

Three reasons people use this:

Verify the data on your card is correct after a renewal. DMVs occasionally typo the address or eye color. The barcode is the source of truth — what gets re-printed if you replace the card.
See exactly what a venue's scanner sees before you hand your license to them. It's a sobering reality check.
Confirm a license is decode-readable before traveling. Some readers fail to scan worn or scratched barcodes; ours will tell you which fields are corrupted.

The privacy posture: the scanner runs in your browser. We only send the decoded text (not the image) to our server for the safety check, so the barcode image itself never leaves your device. Our server log retains nothing PII-shaped — see our privacy page.

Try it on your license

Take a photo of the back of your license (or scan with your phone camera) and drop it on our scanner. Verdict shows every field, masks the license number and DOB, and never sends the image off your device.

Open scanner →