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These last 4 digits represent specific delivery routes within delivery areas. This extra detail means an even more precise matching to a more granular level. It could represent a handful of houses on one side of a street, or even a single building that receives a high volume of mail.

Fortunately, there's an easy solution. When prompted for your ZIP code, enter the three digits from your postal code, followed by ?00.? For example, if your postal code is M4B 1G5, your credit card ZIP code would be 41500.

The first six crosswalk files are used to allocate ZIP codes to Census Bureau geographies such as census tracts, counties, county subdivisions, Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), CBSA Divisions, and Congressional Districts. The last six are used to allocate from those same Census Bureau geographies to ZIP Codes.

The first ZIP code ever given out was 00601, given to Adjuntas, Puerto Rico. It was the first zone established by the Zone Improvement Plan. The next was 01001, given to Agawam in Massachusetts. Due to its number, this is sometimes misattributed as the first ZIP code.

A ZIP Code is a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service (USPS). Introduced on July 1, 1963, the basic format consisted of five digits.

On July 1, 1963, the U.S. Post Office Department introduced the ZIP code program to get a handle on the heaping surplus of mail. Today, those five digits represent much more for American society.

The ZIP in ZIP Code stands for Zone Improvement Plan, and it was introduced July 1, 1963, as part of a larger Postal Service Nationwide Improved Mail Service (NIMS) plan to improve the speed of mail delivery.

In the early days of the U.S. Postal Service, mailing addresses weren't regulated. You might have used the recipient's street address along with the city and state, but you wouldn't have seen a ZIP code. Mail was hand-sorted, and delivery relied on local knowledge of its intended destination.