AusPost: all Australians will have a digital postbox by 2013

Australia Post chief executive Ahmed Fahour announced in a speech last week that Westpac would use the service to provide customers and shareholders with a “secure communications and transaction channel”.

“There are many others – including government agencies and businesses – that we will announce next month,” he told the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

“[The service] is already live and we are testing it with some of our most discerning customers – our staff. By early next year, all Australians will have their own official Digital MailBox.”

The Westpac agreement follows a similar understanding reached in June with AMP. Australia Post also announced that month that it had engaged Telstra to host the service on an “Australian-based secure cloud computing platform”.

“The fact we have three of Australia’s most well-known and iconic companies eager to use the Digital MailBox to connect to consumers is an endorsement of Australia Post’s capability as an innovative communications provider,” said Fahour.

Australia Post won’t have the digital postbox sector to itself. Computershare and Salmat joint venture Digital Post Australia is planning to launch its own service in the last quarter of 2012.

Fahour also said in last week’s speech that digital postboxes represented the future for Australia Post, as the national carrier had been “losing a substantial amount of money in [its] regulated mail business for several years”.

“Letters are our original reason for being. But we know – with absolute certainty – that if we don’t offer a digital alternative, our share of the broader communications market will continue to fall.”

Click here to read more about digital postboxes.

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