How does licensing work?

A Solutions Provider is an organisation licensed by Royal Mail to use its address databases e.g. PAF, to create, enhance and supply products and Solutions.

You can find out more information about pricing here.

Please read the PAF data supply agreement before applying.

A Direct End User is an organisation that purchases a Licence directly from Royal Mail to cover use within their own legal entity.

You can find out more information about pricing here.

Please read the PAF data supply agreement before applying.

Licence both your parent company and your subsidiaries all under one convenient licence option.

As a Corporate Group owner, you can purchase a PAF licence that covers all your Corporate Group members for their use of PAF under one convenient Licence Fee.

Members of your Corporate Group that purchase a PAF-based addressing Solution from a Solutions Provider(s), will not need to pay the PAF licence fees element of any charges by a Solutions Provider because as the Corporate Group owner, you will have paid the Licence Fee directly to Royal Mail.

If you are a Solutions Provider and you sell a PAF Solution to an End User, and you have ascertained that this organisation is part of a Corporate Group that has a Corporate PAF licence, you will need to send a Royalty Return showing a zero fee to Royal Mail by using our Royalty Returns process. Access the Fee Reporting Rules for further details.

A Corporate Licence is also available for our Multiple Residence and Not Yet Built datasets.

To find out more please contact us. You can find out more information about pricing in the licence agreement.

A Micro-Business is an organisation with less than 9 employees and turnover below £2m per annum.

If you are still unsure of your organisation type please contact us.

Please read the PAF data supply agreement before applying.

If your organisation is a UK based Charity or a community interest company with an income of less than £10million you may be eligible to access free PAF Data for non-commercial use.Have you already checked our Charity page to see if you qualify for this licensing option?

If you wish to use PAF for commercial purposes, i.e. making PAF Data available to others via your products and services; or access our other complementary address data products, you will need to return the appropriate licence fees for the supply and use for each of our products.

If you are still unsure of your organisation type please contact us.

Using PAF-powered address solutions has benefits for both the employees of an organisation and for its customers, particularly for selecting and verifying addresses. It is really important to be clear on who is using the data as the licence fees will vary depending on this.

Some organisations like the certainty of licensing all of their users to access PAF whereas others prefer to license on a transactional, pay as you go basis. There are different licensing options within the PAF Agreements to allow organisations to choose what option or combination works best for them.

Many organisations incorporate an address look-up into their website(s) to make online transactions easier for customers and as a way of capturing PAF-verified addresses in a standardised format. These organisations can either manage their use of PAF by licensing on a transactional basis or, for organisations with large volumes of online transactions, it may be better value for them to cap their liability and pay for the unlimited use of the data.

Within the PAF Agreements we no longer prescribe how Solutions Providers or End Users should apply Data Protection rules. Obligations to comply with data protection laws do of course, remain but it is up to the organisation in question to choose how to apply any applicable Data Protection rules.

In most cases, an organisation will license the data based on how its employees and customers will use it. However, linkages between certain organisations, the existence of groups or connected networks such as a retail franchise, requires a different licensing approach.There is further information on these licensing options within the Learning Materials document.

Clarification issued April 2016 The definition of User within our agreements is: “An individual authorised by an End User to use a Solution.” We contacted customers in April 2016 to clarify how to license Users of PAF/Multiple Residence/Not Yet Built in certain circumstances. Further details are contained in the Users factsheet and there are also some Learn diagrams and Scenarios which help to clarify how to license ‘role cover, maternity/paternity leave and job sharing.

The postal address and Postcode information in PAF is widely used by Market Researchers for the purposes of identifying and targeting their research activities. Like other users of PAF, Market Researchers have to license their use of the data, however, unlike in the 2010 PAF Agreement, there are no specific clauses relating to the use of PAF for Market Research Purposes in the current PAF Agreement. This has created some uncertainty for those Market Researchers who are using, and intend to continue to use PAF, so they’ve asked us to clarify our position with regard to this type of use. We recently issued guidelines on our Users factsheet where, under certain circumstances, it would be appropriate to consider multiple ‘individuals’ as only one User and therefore only charge one User fee. We will now consider Researchers* to be treated in the same way as long as those Researchers* are using PAF for Market Research Purposes** *”Researchers” means individuals employed by or contracted (directly or indirectly) to an End User for that End User’s own Market Research Purposes. **”Market Research Purposes” means social or opinion research to gain insight or support decision making in respect of individuals or organisations, by systematic gathering and interpretation of information and use of the statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences.

Whether you want to develop a Solution including all delivery points held within PAF, or simply want a list of post towns, you can choose either Full PAF or *Part PAF.

A full PAF record comprises all known delivery address and postcode elements in the UK. A Part PAF record includes some of the same elements but not all.

You can find details of the data elements contained in a PAF record within the Full and Part PAF section of our Pricing page.

*Please note that Part PAF is only available via a Solutions Provider.

You can choose to license the entire PAF database which contains all UK addresses and 1.8m postcodes, or by individual postcode areas e.g. PO or LS etc.

For example, licensing postcode areas only can offer a flexible, cost effective way for smaller organisations to benefit from using postal address information.

Organisations have a number of choices as to how they license the data and as a result, the licence fees that need to be returned vary accordingly. You can find out more about the Licence Fees within the Full and Part PAF section of our Pricing page.

Solutions Providers are responsible for calculating and reporting all End User Licence Fees to Royal Mail. Licence Fees are calculated on a per annum basis with a requirement to return the fees on a monthly basis.

End User customers may also purchase additional licences during a given licensing year and pay for these on a pro rata basis.

To find out more about Licence Fee reporting, please refer to the pricing page.