edifact

EDIFACT, Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport, is an international standard for electronic data interchange (EDI). It was developed in the 1980s by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) as part of UN/CEFACT to facilitate cross-border business communications. The standard provides a large library of messages to cover common business documents such as orders, invoices, despatch notices and customs declarations.

EDIFACT messages are composed of segments and data elements that follow a defined syntax. A message is enclosed in an interchange envelope with a header (UNH/UNB) and trailer (UNT/UNZ). Separator characters and element formats are defined at the start of the interchange, and the standard uses standardized codes for business terms to enable interoperability across organizations and systems.

The standard is widely used in international trade and logistics, particularly in Europe and Asia. It can be transmitted over various networks and transport methods, and is one of the two dominant EDI standards worldwide, alongside X12 in North America. EDIFACT messages can be mapped to and from other formats, and implementations commonly use translation or integration platforms.

Governance and ongoing development are maintained by UN/CEFACT, with updates to reflect evolving business needs. The EDIFACT family includes hundreds of message types and supports alignment with UN/CEFACT data modelling approaches, enabling semantically rich exchanges through standard components and code lists.

Files typically have extensions such as .edi or .edifact, and implementations rely on EDI translators or middleware to generate, validate and route messages between disparate systems.