Electronic Postage Systems

Abstract

Electronic postage is a special currency valid only for postal transportation of mail pieces and related additional services. The minting and printing of electronic postage is mostly regulated by national universal postal operators. The rules and regulations for using electronic postage differ from one country to another. Any electronic postage system needs an e-postage minting system where mailers can purchase electronic postage and pay for it. All such electronic postage can be turned into valid imprints, which can be applied to physical mailings, thus providing evidence to the postal operator that the mailer has paid for the transport of a mail piece. The postal operators in turn can reconcile the amount of electronic postage they have sold against the amount of electronic postage they have processed through their mail processing centers. This constitutes the basic cycle of electronic postage as shown in Figure 11 on page 26. We will now take a closer look at this cycle.

Keywords

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