Company Identification Number (CIN)
1. Introduction
This document provides the rules, obligations, and encodings of the RAIN Alliance Inc. company identification code (RAIN CIN), allowing
- the RAIN Alliance Inc., as a company identification code (CIN) issuing agency, to meet all the responsibilities, as specified by ISO/IEC 15459, for issuing agencies, and
- the legal entity (Entity) assigned a RAIN CIN to ensure its RAIN CIN is valid and current.
The RAIN Alliance Inc. has been issued an issuing agency code (IAC) “XRA” in accordance with ISO/IEC 15459.
The aim of the RAIN CIN is to ensure and future-proof RAIN RFID as one of the prominent methods to:
- automatically identify items,
- optionally obtain item specific and related information, for
- appropriate actions, by
- optimizing the RAIN CIN encoding for RAIN RFID use, while
- maintaining interoperability with other standardized automated identification technologies.
The RAIN CIN shall be encoded in compliance with acknowledged open standards. The encoding of the RAIN CIN is to:
- optimize the selection and filtering of tags of interest for the reading application,
- optimize the tag memory space to store the encoded RAIN CIN, and
optimize to identify the RAIN tag and access optional information from the RAIN tag.
2. What Number Do I Need?
3. The RAIN CIN
3.1. General
The RAIN CIN shall be unique within the scope of the RAIN IAC.
The RAIN Alliance recognises the requirement for a CIN to be used in more than a single company, like a group of companies or a company providing services to a group of companies. As such, a CIN identifies a company or group of companies accountable for the tag data of an application domain. A single company or group of companies may therefore have more than one CIN.
NOTE: The limited memory space and time to read a RAIN tag in many uses-cases place an obligation on the RAIN Alliance to be prudent with assigning the finite number of CINs.
The RAIN CIN is a 2-, 4-, 6- or 8-digit decimal number to be interoperable with existing AIDC standards, e.g., ISO/IEC 15434, ISO/IEC 15962, ISO/IEC 1736x and ISO/IEC 20248, while optimised for RAIN RFID encoding and use.
The RAIN CIN is encoded in EBV-8 format and is to be used with the RAIN AFI encoded in the tag (RAIN AFI = AE) in the PC bits as explained in “RAIN Alliance Tag Encoding Guideline for use with the RAIN Application Family Identifier (AFI)”
3.2. CIN Indicative Entity classes
The RAIN CIN classes as depicted in the table below are geared to benefit entities or group of entities with a potential to issue many tags.
The codes will issues using the following table as a guide.
| Application (code class) | CIN Range | Annual potential tags per CIN | Available codes | RAIN AFI encoding size |
| Reserved | 0 to 9 | – | – | 1 byte / 8 bits |
| Cloud-based and very large deployments | 10 to 99 | ≥ 100,000,000 | 90 | 1 byte / 8 bits |
| Reserved | 100 to 999 | – | – | 1 and 2 bytes |
| Large deployments | 1000 to 9,999 | ≥ 1,000,000 | 9,000 | 2 bytes / 16 bits |
| Reserved | 10,000 to 99,999 | – | – | 2 and 3 bytes |
| Medium deployments | 100,000 to 999,999 | ≥ 10,000 | 9,000,000 | 3 bytes / 24 bits |
| Reserved | 1,000,000 to 9,999,999 | – | – | 3 and 4 bytes |
| Small deployments | 10,000,000 to 99,999,999 | ≥ 100 | 900,000,000 | 4 bytes / 32 bits |
NOTE: Digits/bits/bytes are explained in the tag encoding guidelines and the encoder/decoder tool.
The 2-digit/1-byte code is limited. Issuing these codes should be with a strong motivation, especially to the advancement of RAIN RFID uptake.
All applications other than for 8-digit CINs will be reviewed by the CIN Review Committee for suitability according to the justification provided.
3.3. Price
There is an application fee of $50 for all applications. This fee is paid when the application is submitted. Processing of the application will start until the application fee is received.
There is an annual fee for all CIN types:
| CIN Class | Annual class fee |
| 2-digit CIN | $2,000 |
| 4-digit CIN | $1,000 |
| 6-digit CIN | $500 |
| 8-digit CIN | $50 |
Payment may be made by credit card or by invoice. The CIN number will not be issued until payment is received.
3.4. Registry
A registry of CIN numbers is available on this page. All issued CINs will be listed on this page.
4. Read More
- RAIN Alliance Number Encoder-Decoder Tool
- RAIN Alliance Tag Encoding Guideline for use with the RAIN Application Family Identifier (AFI)
- RAIN Alliance CIN Agreement