Europe 1 with AFP 2:46 p.m., June 28, 2022
Nathalie Collin, boss of the Consumer and Digital branch of La Poste, announced Tuesday that the group will market next year a "digital stamp" in the form of a code that will suffice to copy on the envelope.
It will be sold online at the price of the green stamp (non-urgent).
La Poste will market next year a "digital stamp" in the form of a code that will suffice to be copied on the envelope, announced Tuesday the boss of the Consumer and Digital branch of the group, Nathalie Collin .
We can concretely download this alphanumeric code of eight characters, sold online at the price of the green stamp (non-urgent).
Then "we write the eight-character code on the envelope as we would write a password", explained Nathalie Collin in front of journalists.
"A letter to the post office in the digital age"
"It's like a letter to the post office in the digital age," she laughed.
The technique, already used in Switzerland, must be validated by the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Press Distribution (Arcep), for expected marketing "probably early 2023", according to her.
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- "We have the impression that the only concern of the Post Office is to do business"
Probayes, a start-up specializing in data and artificial intelligence acquired by La Poste in 2017, provided a "fairly complex algorithm which makes it possible to issue several million codes over eight characters" by reducing the number of frauds while accepting "a very slight error from the person who is going to write the code," she noted.
500 million euros to renovate post offices
Nathalie Collin will initiate an investment plan of 800 million euros, of which 500 million will go to the renovation of all post offices by 2027. At the same time, she will devote 300 million euros to strengthening the connections between the network of post offices and the digital services of the public group, facilitating appointment scheduling, updating opening hours in real time, measurement and tracking of parcels, videoconferencing, etc.
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- The origins of the stamp
La Poste has 17,000 "contact points", including 7,000 post offices -compared to 10,000 ten years ago-, 7,000 municipal postal agencies and 3,000 post-traders.
By adding the relay points and instructions, it has 35,000 "service points", the objective being to increase to 40,000 by 2025, according to Nathalie Collin.