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Digital vaping duty stamps open on 1 September — and HMRC has set the SKU fields
HMRC's stamps guidance, updated on 26 August, lists the ten data fields a liable product must carry into the system, and sets 30 November as the last day a transitional stamp can be bought.
Two stamps, not one. That is the part of the vaping duty stamp scheme trade summaries have described least well, and HMRC’s guidance on how vaping duty stamps work — updated on 26 August — sets out both formats with dates attached.
The transitional stamp carries physical security features only and is not scanned. The digital stamp adds an element supporting authentication and traceability. Per the guidance, transitional stamps have been available since 1 April 2026 and stay on sale until 30 November. Digital stamps arrive on 1 September. From 1 January 2027, only digital stamps may be affixed, and by 1 April 2027 every vaping product outside duty suspension must carry one.
The ten fields
The 26 August revision clarified rather than changed policy. HMRC has now published the data a business must supply when it adds a product stock keeping unit to the system: the product name as it appears in the market reference, a commercial description, a GTIN or barcode, volume in millilitres to the nearest 0.1 ml, brand, flavour, product type, nicotine content in milligrams per millilitre, an ECID or GBID reference where the product exceeds 0 mg/ml, and a product image in JPEG.
Product type is the field worth pausing on: the guidance limits it to four values — prefilled pod, prefilled device, bottle, or other. A shelf that the single-use prohibition rearranged around pods and refills is being asked to describe itself in four words.
The guidance names the platform: a Digital Activation System module and a data repository, with an interface built to the GS1 standard for event information.
The physical detail
Stamps are 42 mm long and 18 mm wide. Wet stamps arrive in coils on 3-inch cores, 20,000 to a reel as the standard packaging unit; dry stamps come boxed, with a minimum order of 1,000 either way. A stamp must be fixed to the outermost retail packaging so that the packaging cannot be opened without damaging one or the other. It need not sit flat, provided the code still scans; HMRC says testing has read a 10 mm curvature radius.
Only operators HMRC has approved under the scheme — UK manufacturers, warehousekeepers and UK representatives — may buy stamps, from the appointed supplier through a secure platform. Purchase limits run on a rolling three-month basis and may be exceeded by up to 30 per cent.
None of this alters the rate or the commencement date, which we set out when the duty timetable was published. It alters what a manufacturer needs in place before October: an approval, a stamp supply, and a populated record for every liable line it means to keep selling. Lines nobody troubles to register are the ones that quietly leave the shelf.
A stamp on a carton changes nothing about what is inside. Nicotine is addictive, UK sale is restricted to over-18s, and our readers are adults who already use it or are weighing a move off cigarettes.