What is the Real Future for Posts?
Is it to operate like a private logistics company?
Every country in the world has a Post Office. These Posts usually fulfil a Universal Service Obligation (USO) that mandates them to provide accessible mail delivery at affordable rates.
As physical letter mail declines, however, the Posts look increasingly like service provides whose biggest priority is to service retailers like Amazon, Temu, and Shein.
While USO’s are seemingly about delivering letter mail and small parcels, the original intent of the USO was to facilitate reliable and affordable communications between people.
This make sense for the government to take on because the cost to build the infrastructure necessary for a nation wide service mail was too much for any private company to bear, and those communications were too important for a private or unregulated company to own.
Important communication might have included:
Licenses, registrations, certifications and permits
Matters of personal identity
Government related services like medical care, social security
Utilities
Taxes
Voting (in some countries)
It’s no coincidence that a few generations ago, people checked their physical mail boxes the way we check our phone notifications and email inbox today.
These items were so important, in fact, that in many countries the receiver paid for the mail.
HISTORY LESSON: Sender paid mail largely became popular once Posts realized that private companies would be happy to pay money to send advertisements in the mail. Yes friends — Paid Ads.
Communication Today: A Hot Mess
Yes official communication today is fragmented and controlled by private companies that sell access to both our information and our inboxes.
The average person maintains multiple email inboxes, chat apps, government service apps and utility apps to keep up to date.
They save their files to their phones locally, to their laptops, to cloud drives, or maybe even store files to USB drives.
In other words, it’s a hot mess.
The Golden Opportunity
The Posts of this generation are presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity to solve the communication and documentation morass of every person in the world, while simultaneously fulfilling the spirit and the intent of the USO by becoming a national facilitator of digital communication and services.
Such as platform services the greater good of society through:
A single central point of communication
Free to use by all residents (public right)
Enhanced security, encryption and authentication
Clear and permanent history, transactions, and records
Reduction of print mail costs and overhead
Associated reduction of carbon footprint
Early Adopters
The story of Denmark’s postal evolution is one to study.
Denmark’s PostNord has doubled downed on the mission to facilitate communication through digitization by becoming the de facto superapp for digital communication platform for all official records and services.
National ID, drivers licenses, government appointments, tax communications, and even hospital visits — all information which are fairly sensitive in nature — are facilitated through the post’s superapp which ensures both privacy and security, as well as facilities access and communication between residents, the government, and even verified 3rd parties.
The program has been so successful that 95% of their residents use the communication platform according to BBC.
Solving the Letter Mail Problem
The reduction of physical letter mail also means that the Post could stem losses from letter mail. In fact, PostNord has announced that it will completely discontinue physical mail in January of 2026, according to BBC.
With beloved Posts such as Canada Post incurring losses of $541 million in Q3 2025, and PostNL incurring losses of €23M in the same period, letter mail delivery losses are untenable and require requires immediate action.
Evolving into a digital communication and services platform allows Posts to kill two birds* with one stone.
Evolution of the Universal Postal Union (UPU)
The UPU could potentially evolve to act as a guiding hand in setting standards for cross country, authenticated, secured, and delivered communications.
It might also enable an entire world of previously unimagined benefits of cross border communications, for example:
Cross border driver licenses applications and uses
Global travel visa documentation
User granted access to medical history and records for cross border care
Instant digital ID verification cross borders
Connecting cross border transactions like India’s UPI system
Far from having no more function, the UPU would become more important than ever.
[DISLCAIMER: This article is in no way compensated or sponsored. It is our own personal opinions and are not in any way endorsed by any companies or organizations with which we are affiliated.]
* “Killing two birds with one stone,” is a figure of speech only. I am against the killing of birds