April 2000

Postage stamps that you can print from your own PC could be available in Europe before long.

E-Stamp, one of two companies granted rights to offer such a service in the United States, has plans to launch trial operations in "three or four other countries", according to chief executive officer Bo Ewald. Germany and the UK have been mentioned as possible locations, although for now he is not revealing where the trials will be held.

Ewald told e.logistics Magazine: "We see E-Stamp as a key component for companies delivering products bought over the Internet." He also gave a hint that pre-payment of private carriers might be a future development, although he would not be drawn on the detail.

E-Stamp and Stamps.com both started US operations last summer, following several years of development and a lengthy approval process by the US Postal Service. E-Stamp provides customers with a $49 hardware encryption "dongle" that plugs in to the PC"s printer port, allowing stamps to be printed off-line, while Stamps.com relies on software encryption and assumes users will print stamps straight from the Web.

The "stamps" take the form of two-dimensional bar codes, of which (in the case of E-Stamp) there are two one containing address and routing details, the other a unique "signature" and value. USPS sorting hubs are being equipped to read these codes.

Initially such services have been targeted at "SOHO" (small office and home) users, but E-Stamp is already hoping to widen its own appeal by means of a cross-licensing agreement it has just signed with UK-owned software house Kewill, which is the American market leader in "carrier compliance" systems. One of the first fruits of this initiative is a deal with retailer Wal-Mart (International e.logistics, page 10).

These systems allow users to select express services from DHL, UPS or similar carriers that are most appropriate to specific consignments. Now the E-Stamp service will be included to extend the application to the postal arena, while E-Stamp in turn will include a pointer to Kewill"s service to allow private carrier selection from its own system. There is talk of a co-branded portal to cement the relationship. Kewill claims it holds 70 per cent of the carrier selection software market, and brings an estimated 25,000 customers to the party, while E-Stamp"s in turn contribute its own customer base. By the end of last year E-Stamp had delivered 46,000 systems, and handled $1.3 million in revenue a figure predicted to increase tenfold this year.