With mouse in hand, Postmaster General Marvin Runyon today created the first electronic stamp and proclaimed, "This is the future. Postage directly from a personal computer."
The ceremony at the National Postal Museum in Washington, DC, was held to unveil the US Postal Service's move toward electronic postage, 78 years after postage meters were approved and 151 years after the United States issued its first postage stamp.
The SmartStamp system developed by E-Stamp of Palo Alto, California, was approved for testing last year and may one day let businesses and individuals print their own postage using PCs and the Internet.
The electronic stamps will include the postage amount, name and ZIP code of the local post office, date the postage was printed, and rate category, such as "first class." The system also produces an electronic bar coding of the same information as well as the ID number of the printing device, and a digital pattern that will make each envelope unique and hard to counterfeit.
Installed on a Windows PC, E-Stamp's envelope-printing software allows a user to send postage stamps as though they were printing jobs. In this case, the network connection not only queues a printing request, it also debits an account set up with E-Stamp along the way.
The E-Stamp Postal Security Device - a peripheral that uses a chip to hold information for a user's postage account - deducts the amount of postage and tracks a user's running tally of postage. The device is connected to the network, between PCs and the printer. The PSD is also what generates the electronic postage - 32-cent stamps and other amounts, depending upon the weight of a package or envelope.
When the PSD runs out of postage, users can use secure credit-card forms and other electronic payment to purchase more from the E-Stamp Web site. The E-Stamp software notifies the PSD of the purchase.
E-Stamp said the system is likely to support an e-cash scheme eventually, but only when such systems reach mainstream status.
The USPS said security was the main concern in e-stamp development since the ability to print stamps is equivalent to printing money.
