The Digital Postal Network at the Heart of Service Innovation

The postal network has been at the heart of communications and commerce for centuries, across vast countries and around the globe. It is a “network of networks” that covers the world. The expansion of the Internet and the development of the Information Society in the past 20 years has challenged the postal industry to evolve and innovate, in order to be relevant to the new needs of the digital citizen. Universal Postal Union (UPU) research on the development of new services has shown that this evolution continues to gather momentum every day. At the heart of this innovation is the emergence of a digital postal network, which is a complementary channel for the availability of postal services. This is again a “network of networks,” which interconnects national digital postal services to provide international services, thereby enabling greater trust in cross-border communication and commerce in the digital space. The UPU is tasked by its members to extend the single postal territory, embrace innovations around digital postal services, and build a technical and legal framework under which these international services can be managed and trusted.