The standard abbreviation for American Samoa is AS. That’s the two-letter code the U.S. Postal Service uses for addresses, and it’s also American Samoa’s ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, so the same two letters work for a mailing label and for most international forms. A few specialized systems use different codes, covered below.
Mailing an Address to American Samoa
USPS lists “AS” as the official two-letter abbreviation for American Samoa, on equal footing with the codes for the 50 states and the other U.S. territories.1United States Postal Service. Two-Letter State and Possession Abbreviations If a form asks for a state abbreviation and the address is in American Samoa, “AS” goes in that field.
The territory has a single ZIP code: 96799. The correct last line of an address is PAGO PAGO AS 96799, using the capital as the destination city.2United States Postal Service. 608 Postal Information and Resources American Samoa sits inside the domestic postal network, so mail from the mainland uses domestic postage rates rather than international ones. Informal forms like “A.S.” or “Am. Sam.” can cause delays or misrouting because sorting equipment reads the official two-letter codes.
ISO and International Trade Codes
Under ISO 3166-1, American Samoa carries three codes:
- Alpha-2: AS
- Alpha-3: ASM
- Numeric: 016
The alpha-2 code matches the USPS abbreviation, which keeps things simple when a single form needs both a mailing address and a country code.3UNCTADstat. Correspondence Table ISO 3166-1 UNCTADstat The three-letter ASM code shows up on international shipping manifests, customs declarations, and trade databases. The numeric 016 is used by systems that avoid alphabetic characters.
For U.S. foreign trade filings, the Census Bureau uses a separate Schedule C country code for American Samoa: 9510.4U.S. Census Bureau. Schedule C – Country Codes and Descriptions This is the code to use on customs documentation and Electronic Export Information declarations for commercial shipments.
Federal Statistical Code
Federal agencies identify American Samoa with the numeric code 60. It originated in FIPS Publication 5-25National Bureau of Standards. FIPS PUB 5-2 – Codes for the Identification of the States, the District of Columbia and the Outlying Areas of the United States, and Associated Areas and carried over when that standard was withdrawn in September 2008 and replaced by INCITS 38.6National Institute of Standards and Technology. Replacement Standards for Withdrawn FIPS on Geographic Codes You’ll still see 60 in Census Bureau datasets, demographic reports, and federal grant tracking systems.
Phone and Internet Codes That Share the Abbreviation
American Samoa’s telephone area code is 684 within the North American Numbering Plan, dialed as +1-684 from outside the United States. The territory shares the “+1” country calling code with the U.S. mainland; 684 is unique to American Samoa.
Its country-code top-level domain is .as, managed by the AS Domain Registry in Pago Pago.7Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Delegation Record for .AS The domain matches the postal and ISO alpha-2 codes, which makes AS the most versatile abbreviation for American Samoa across systems.
Forms to Avoid
In headlines and general writing you may see “Am. Sam.” or the punctuated “A.S.” These are editorial choices, not official standards. Automated systems won’t recognize them and will either reject the input or route it incorrectly. On envelopes, government forms, and database entries, use “AS” without periods.