The UIC barcode is a 2D barcode developed for international long-distance rail travel. It is issued by the International Union of Railways (UIC), which registers long-distance rail operators and maintains a public database of public keys. This enables railway operators involved in cross-border services to verify the authenticity of each other’s tickets.

However, the UIC only publishes the specification. Everything a transport operator requires for encryption, blocking, monitoring or the set of rules governing interactions between different companies must be set up and operated by the operator itself. As these are mostly national long-distance rail operators, which are generally state-owned, the number of UIC users who need to exchange data with their neighbours is manageable.

The VDV barcode is also a 2D barcode; it was developed specifically for local public transport in Germany and forms part of the VDV core application. It is embedded in the central back-end systems and the regulatory framework of (((eTicket Deutschland). It therefore utilises the same security infrastructure as that used for smart cards in Germany and is designed for interoperable use by thousands of organisations that do not know one another but must trust one another.

As the use of the VDV barcode requires only a participant agreement and at least one security module with a secret key, the VDV barcode is significantly more cost-effective for nationwide use in Germany than the UIC barcode. Full use of all back-end systems and centralised security management is included in full for participants. This includes encryption, blocking, communication within the shared network and national monitoring.