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All You Need to Know About the New Carta Porte Regulation

by EasyPost
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Effective August 1, 2023, Mexico will begin enforcing the Carta Porte regulation, and all packages sent to, from, or within Mexico will be required to have a package-level description of the shipment. Businesses must be in compliance with Carta Porte or be subjected to potential fines, fees, shipping delays, non-deductible taxes, and/or seizure of goods.

The timing for each carrier to enforce this new regulation via their API will vary. For example, UPS will begin enforcing through their API effective March 6, 2023.

What is Carta Porte?

Carte Porte is a new document tied to Mexico’s digital invoice or Comprobante Fiscal Digital por Internet (CFDI), and provides additional shipment information. It is being implemented as part of the effort to reduce contraband. It applies to all shipments transporting via road, rail, water, or air. Shipments will need a Carta Porte for each mode of transportation or leg of the delivery route.

The following person(s) must comply with Carta Porte:

  • Local and international companies, including importers and exporters, who use transportation services within Mexico
  • Owners who are transporting their own goods within Mexico
  • Transportation providers with their own vehicle fleet or intermediaries such as 3PLs, 4PLs, forwarders, etc.

How Carta Porte appears in the API

There have been no changes to the EasyPost API. International shippers must fill out the package level description in our API, more detail regarding our objects can be found within our API Docs here. The following is applicable to this regulatory change:

  • Shippers who fall within this regulatory scope are required to fill out this field shipment.customs_info.contents_explanation (max 255 characters) with human readable description of content.
  • EasyPost already enforces customs_info.customs_items.description

Shipments that do not include the package-level description will fail and EasyPost will pass the carrier specific error message. 

What do you need to do for Carta Porte?

  1. For all qualified shipments to, from, and within Mexico, businesses should have the following information ready for their shipments:
    1. Description of goods being shipped
    2. Shipper and receiver information
    3. Means of transportation
  2. Fill in the requested information within the API.
  3. Ship your packages as usual.

You may already be in compliance, but if you feel that you need help reviewing your current integration, please reach out to support@easypost.com