CBP's New Entry Type 13 Mail Process Just Started: What Changes for Your Cross-Border Orders

Customs and Border Protection opened its Entry Type 13 test today. If you ship internationally, this is the detail that matters more than the surcharge headlines: low-value mail shipments are moving from a simple declaration to a full data submission, whether or not your order value would have cleared the old de minimis threshold.

What Entry Type 13 actually is

Entry Type 13 is a new electronic informal entry process for international mail shipments valued at $2,500 or less. It replaces the old model, where a package with a customs form and a value under the exemption threshold moved through with minimal friction.

Under the new process, the importer or a licensed customs broker has to submit shipment-level data electronically: HTSUS tariff classification, country of origin, declared value, calculated duty, and bond information. That is a different operating model from stapling a CN22 form to a padded envelope.

This follows the broader suspension of the de minimis exemption that took effect in 2025 and remains in place. Entry Type 13 is CBP's attempt to make the resulting flood of formal-style entries for small packages actually processable at scale.

Why this is a fulfillment problem, not just a compliance one

Most of the coverage on this frames it as a tariff and duty story. For a Shopify brand shipping to international customers, the more immediate issue is operational.

Every mail shipment now needs accurate HTSUS codes and origin data attached before it moves. If your product catalog does not already carry that data, someone has to generate it, and errors in classification are what cause a shipment to sit at customs instead of moving through.

That means the fulfillment side of the business, not just finance, now owns a piece of trade compliance. Whoever manages your carrier integrations and label generation needs H.S. codes as a required field, not an optional one, before this becomes normal.

What to check now

Confirm whether your shipping software or 3PL already supports Entry Type 13 data submission, or whether you are relying on a customs broker to fill the gap. Ask your carrier or broker directly whether informal mail entries for your international orders are already flowing through the new process or still queued under legacy handling.

Audit your product catalog for missing or incorrect HTSUS classifications. This is tedious, but it is the single biggest driver of customs delay once entry requirements tighten.

Decide who owns customs data accuracy internally. In most DTC operations, nobody currently owns this, because de minimis made it unnecessary. That gap needs an owner now.

The customer experience risk

None of this is visible to your customer until their order sits in customs longer than expected. Every merchant who ships internationally should assume a wave of new international WISMO tickets is coming as this process ramps up, driven by classification errors and processing backlogs rather than lost packages.

A branded Shipping Guarantee gives you a resolution path for that specific failure mode: a customer whose international order is delayed at the border through no fault of the carrier or the merchant. The customer does not care whether the delay is a lost package or a customs hold. They care that someone owns the fix.

Building that resolution path now, before the new process is fully ramped up, is cheaper than doing it in the middle of a support ticket spike.

Merchants shipping internationally should build a resolution plan for customs-driven delays before they become a support volume problem. See how ShipAid's post-purchase platform handles international shipping issues at shipaid.com.