This discussion is bringing us back to the similar, quite heated one, we had not long ago.

Does a "Customer" have a "Natural Key"?

Customer Code? May be, but to make it unique, you will need to introduce the special infrastructure which will need to generate one and ensure it is unique within organisation. So, for this organisation, you can make it "Natural", but that's about it.

Now, why to bother with the cost of infrastructure to generate and maintain such unique "Customer Codes"? Just to make it look nicer? Kind of alpha-numeric?

Identity, could easily play the role of "Customer Code", to make it more appearing to customer, you can format it as you wish when it's shown to them.

For example, to please Chinese customers, make Customer Code/Id BIGINT and seed it from 77700000000000. Format it as 777-000-0000-0000 for better readability on output documents and it will make Asian people happy :hehe:

Actually, I would not even use such name as "Customer Code" for a key. For me it means more kind of "Customer Type". Customer Number or Account Number at least, or simply Customer ID is sounds better to me.