Pedobacter heparinus (Payza and Korn 1956) Steyn et al. 1998 comb. nov. is the type species of the rapidly growing genus Pedobacter within the family Sphingobacteriaceae of the phylum 'Bacteroidetes'. P. heparinus is of interest, because it was the first isolated strain shown to grow with heparin as sole carbon and nitrogen source and because it produces several enzymes involved in the degradation of mucopolysaccharides. All available data about this species are based on a sole strain that was isolated from dry soil. Here we describe the features of this organism, together with the complete genome sequence, and annotation. This is the first report on a complete genome sequence of a member of the genus Pedobacter, and the 5,167,383 bp long single replicon genome with its 4287 protein-coding and 54 RNA genes is part of the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea project.