It's not the end of an era, just modernization.
Even if it will always be possible to lick your stamp before sticking it on your envelope, La Poste will market from 2023 a “digital stamp” which will allow mail to be franked from a smartphone using an eight-digit code.
This unique code will cost 1.16 euros and will initially only concern green letters weighing less than 20 grams.
La Poste thus hopes to “respond to a need for immediacy” and follows the Swiss model, where this technique is already used.
What is the digital stamp?
A system that allows you to frank your mail from your smartphone, without buying a classic stamp.
The manipulation is supposed to last a few minutes: connect to the La Poste application with your smartphone, buy a digital stamp, receive a code of eight digits and letters and transcribe it by hand on your mail.
"It gives everyone the opportunity, regardless of location or time" to post a letter "without having a stamp on hand", welcomes La Poste in a press release.
Smart cameras in sorting centres, already capable of reading addresses, are now programmed to decipher these new codes, which will be unique, valid for eight days and will cost 1.16 euros, the price of a green stamp.
Initially, it will only concern green letters weighing less than 20 grams to France.
What will it be used for?
La Poste plans to offer this service from 2023 in order to modernize its operation.
"This responds to a need for immediacy, in addition to the classic stamp and the one we print, in order to reconcile the physical and the digital", judges Pierre-Etienne Bardin, director of data and artificial intelligence of the group. The post office.
And to add: “Will it be successful and allow us to win back users who had disengaged from mail?
We hope so.
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Is it secure?
The Post office assures us that it is.
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.
The system measures a certain margin of error in the writing of the code, in particular in its readability.
“We have anti-fraud systems, assures Pierre-Etienne Bardin.
The product is easy to use and resists fraud schemes, which is also why there is an expiry date.
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Is this the end of the classic timbre?
The answer is obviously no.
The digital stamp is not intended to replace the current operation.
The innovation, which is part of a total investment of 800 million by La Poste to modernize its post offices and change its practices, could however call for others.
La Poste is considering extending the use of the digital stamp to “larger envelopes and parcels” in a second phase, according to Pierre-Etienne Bardin.
