Shopify APO, FPO, and DPO addresses

How APO, FPO, and DPO addresses are written, and what Shopify can allow or block

Direct answer. USPS writes a military or diplomatic shipment to a named person, with the unit or PSC and box on the delivery line, then APO, FPO, or DPO as the city, a two-letter designation, and the ZIP Code — and it says not to add a foreign city or country. Postal Explorer 225.1 uses AE for armed forces in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Canada; AP for the Pacific; and AA for the Americas excluding Canada. Shopify Help’s address-format page maps that onto United States, an Armed Forces state, and a city of only APO, FPO, or DPO. A merchant allows the destination by including the country or region in a shipping zone that has rates, and can reject an address checkout would otherwise take with address checks or a checkout validation function. Those Help pages do not name an APO on/off switch. Confirm the live pages. This page is not legal advice.

PO Box Blocker — AddressFence (Shopify App Store · Write a review). Free blocks PO Boxes and parcel lockers on the shipping address at checkout, plus a small set of ZIP rules. Street-number checks and billing-address rules are on a paid plan. It tests an address in the simulator before you publish. This page does not read it as an APO, FPO, or DPO switch. The PO Box question is Does Shopify ship to PO Boxes?.

Related: B2B PO Guard — Require PO — B2B purchase order number required at company checkout.

Free check first: PO box and street number address checker runs in your browser and sends nothing. Paste addresses and see which look like a PO box or lack a street number.

Checklist before you allow or block a military address

The USPS lines

The USPS military and diplomatic mail page says each shipment needs the recipient’s name, rank, and unit, and the APO, FPO, or DPO address with the 9-digit ZIP Code. It also says to include a return address, to address the piece to a specific person, and that addressing to “Any Service Member” is no longer permitted. It says not to include city or country names, so the piece does not enter a foreign mail network. The examples it prints are:

That page asks for a 9-digit ZIP Code and also prints 5-digit examples. Use the ZIP the recipient was assigned. Postal Explorer 225.1 says an overseas military address must contain the APO or FPO designation, a two-character “state” abbreviation of AE, AP, or AA, and the ZIP Code or ZIP+4 Code, and it defines AE, AP, and AA as in the direct answer. Confirm both USPS pages if a DPO line is not in section 225.1.

How Shopify Help says to enter the same address

Shopify Help’s reviewing-address-formats page says there are three US military address types: APO, FPO, and DPO. If the customer’s entry does not match, edit it using these guidelines from that page:

Help’s “Armed Forces America” and Postal Explorer’s “Americas excluding Canada” are not the same sentence. Quote the page you are following, and ask the customer if a field is unclear. Help also says that if you are unsure, contact the customer before you ship.

Zones, rates, and checkout validation

Shopify Help says a shipping zone is a group of countries or regions, and that you add rates inside the zone. It also says customers can place an order for a country only when that country is in an active market and in a zone that has rates. Within a location group, a country or region can sit in only one zone. That is how a merchant includes a destination, or withholds a rate by leaving the destination out of a zone.

Those pages describe countries and regions. They do not, in the text used for this guide, say that selecting United States automatically includes or excludes Armed Forces Americas, Europe, and Pacific. Check the regions list in the zone editor against the live Help article before you treat AA, AE, or AP as covered or blocked.

Address collection preferences describe autocomplete and validating some shipping addresses before the order is placed. That setting is not written there as a military-address block. A rule that rejects a delivery address is a Cart and Checkout Validation Function: shopify.dev says the function can return a validation error on a checkout field, including delivery-address targets. Whether a given function treats APO, FPO, and DPO as allowed is the function you publish, not a switch this page found on Help. The wider checkout picture is Shopify address validation at checkout.

Allowing the address at checkout is not a statement that every carrier will deliver it. Carrier rules are outside the USPS and Shopify pages cited here. The PO Box comparison is Does Shopify ship to PO Boxes?.

What this page is not

Related pages

Not legal advice. Confirm the live USPS pages and Shopify Help and shopify.dev before you treat an APO, FPO, or DPO address as accepted or blocked. Billing-address rules you configure are on a paid plan. Free blocks shipping PO Boxes and parcel lockers, plus a small set of ZIP rules. It does not ship parcels.