Shipping Worldwide? Your Address Validation Needs to Speak the Right Language

Expanding into global markets is exciting—until address errors start causing failed deliveries, checkout friction, and unnecessary shipping costs.

For US businesses shipping overseas, one of the biggest challenges is handling address variations across languages and regions:

• An address that works in the US might be unreadable in Japan or Saudi Arabia.
• Abbreviations, street types, and local formatting vary widely.
• A system built only for Western address structures will create frustration for international customers.

And here’s the truth: Your customers won’t change how they enter their address—your system needs to adapt.

The Global Address Challenge

Hangul, Kanji, Hiragana & Latin? We’ve Got It Covered

Imagine a customer in South Korea entering:

📝 "서울특별시 종로구 자하문로 108-21 청운빌딩 100동 1호 03047"

Without proper Hangul character support, many systems would struggle to interpret spacing, building names, and directional words.

At Address Zen, we offer industry-leading Hangul fuzzy matching, so even if a customer misspells a syllable or omits spacing, we find the correct result.

Meanwhile, in Japan, customers use a mix of Kanji, Hiragana, and Latin scripts:

📝 "東京都渋谷区千駄ヶ谷1-5-1"

📝 "Tokyo-to, Shibuya-ku, Sendagaya 1-5-1"

• Some systems fail when Japanese addresses are entered in mixed scripts.
• We support all three—Kanji, Hiragana, and Latin—ensuring accurate matches no matter the input format.

What Sets Our Address Validation Apart?

Many validation tools assume a one-size-fits-all approach—great for Western addresses, but unreliable elsewhere. We’ve designed ours to scale globally, with the flexibility to handle how people actually enter addresses around the world.

1. We Adapt to Local Address Formats

Instead of forcing every input into a US-style structure, we recognize the natural formats used in each country:

📌 In Japan, addresses are written from largest area to smallest—we support this flow alongside Western-style ordering.

📌 In Brazil and Mexico, the house number typically comes after the street name (e.g., “Av. Paulista 1578”). We interpret this correctly to match how people write addresses locally.

📌 In the Middle East, positional codes like Makani (UAE) and Onwani (Qatar) supplement traditional addressing systems. We validate these identifiers alongside street and city information.

2. Smarter Handling of Abbreviations & Local Variations

Customers around the world use abbreviations, alternate spellings, and casual formatting. We’re built to understand that.

• In Mexico:
  • "Av." → "Avenida"
  • "Blvd." → "Boulevard"
  • "Cd." → "Ciudad"
  • State abbreviations like "CDMX" (Ciudad de México), "NL" (Nuevo León), etc.
• In Brazil:
  • "R." → "Rua" (Street)
  • "Av." → "Avenida"
  • "Rod." → "Rodovia" (Highway)
  • State abbreviations like "SP" for São Paulo, "RJ" for Rio de Janeiro

Even if there are misspellings, we can still return the correct result. For example:

📝 "rodavia dos Imigrantes"

💡 We match it to: ✅ "Rodovia dos Imigrantes"

3. Flexible Formatting for Street Types (Dutch, German & Finnish)

In some countries, street types may appear in different formats depending on how the customer writes them. For example, a German user might write:

• "Hauptstrasse" (joined)
• "Haupt-Strasse" (hyphenated)
• "Haupt Strasse" (split)

💡 We allow searching with any of these formats—joined, hyphenated, or spaced, using either the full or abbreviated street type.

✳️ But we return one preferred, standardized result, ensuring your database stays clean while remaining flexible for user input.

A real-world example:

• A search for "Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Pl" (abbreviated) will return the correct result for "Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Platz".

4. We Catch Formatting Errors Before They Cause Problems

Most customers don’t enter addresses perfectly—and they shouldn’t have to. Our system catches common mistakes and still returns a valid, structured address.

• Accents & Diacritics: Whether it’s "Koln" or "Köln", we know what they meant.
• Typos & Spacing: If someone types "avenuda Paulista" instead of "avenida Paulista", we’ll return the correct match.
• Script and Language Mixing: If part of a Japanese address is entered in Latin script and part in Kanji, we still parse it correctly.

We’re not just validating addresses—we’re bridging the gap between how people type and what they mean.

Built for US Businesses Expanding Internationally

If you’re shipping from the US to Asia, Latin America, or beyond, your address validation needs to:

1️⃣ Recognize and validate addresses in local formats (including non-Latin scripts).

2️⃣ Support multiple languages and scripts seamlessly (Kanji, Hangul, Arabic, Cyrillic, etc.).

3️⃣ Handle country-specific address quirks without extra work for the customer.

Ship Smarter, Deliver Faster

When your address validation understands global customers, you reduce errors, save money, and increase conversions.

📦 Fewer failed deliveries = Lower costs.

⏳ Faster checkout = Higher conversions.

🌎 Better global coverage = Smoother expansion into new markets.

Ready to Ship Worldwide Without the Guesswork?

Our global address validation ensures that no matter where your customers are—from New York to Tokyo, São Paulo to Seoul—their address is entered correctly the first time.

💡 Learn more about our address validation here

📖 Explore our developer documentation

💰 Check out our pricing plans

Your customers shouldn’t have to change how they enter their address—your system should understand them.

Try it today and start shipping with confidence. 🚀