“I love footsteps in my store”
– so Mr John Reis, Head of Retail for
Canada Post Corporation, summed up the attraction of the pre-paid
card. The launch of a Visa branded, pre-paid gift card in 2010 and
subsequently a re-loadable card in 2011 became a huge success for
the retail business sector of Canadian Post. Revenues of new business
streams soon grew beyond all expectations, but the greatest attrac-
tion was within customers’ usage patterns. Even though cards can be
re-loaded via account transfers initiated from the internet, more than
95% of the reloads were made in person in post offices, many of which
were in remote areas. Over half of the card usage is on-line which, in
addition, helps facilitate parcel shipments, as well as returns, which
is a core business and strategic priority of the Post. Canada Post will
continue to expand its portfolio of financial products and will continue
to target customers who are looking for alternative payment options to
shop on-line or perhaps are under-served by traditional banks.
“It required electronic point-of-sales, a partner in the pre-paid industry
and a technology partner” said John Reis, “but the rewards were great
and there is still much potential to explore”.
3
Mr Bernhard Bukovc, Postal Innovation Platform,
spoke about the
opportunities and challenges of the postal sector. He pointed out the
strengths of the postal sector, based on the postal DNA, which should
be defined broadly as intermediaries bringing things from A to B. He
also explained how eCommerce growth offered promising business
opportunities, provided a few challenges were addressed successfully.
Posts should:
•
Remain strong in the core business
•
Diversify into areas where they can grow revenues
•
Expand along the value chain(s) of their customers (both senders &
receivers)
•
Become business partners to consumers, businesses & governments
•
Embrace technology (including big data, Internet of Things, supply
chain analysis, address & identity verification etc.)
Presence and flexibility were essential, as well as seamless cross-bor-
der services. An important key to success is to offer choice and flexibility
to the customers when it comes to access, products, delivery, price,
returns and many other elements across the entire value chain.
Also, the close ties to government could be a win-win situation for postal
operators, governments and citizens/business. Posts could offer solu-
tions to governments (licensing of businesses, fine management and
collection, solutions for health services, passport and document services
and many others), thus creating new revenue streams.
Posts need to adapt to the new market requirements and change some
of their business models. Understanding the customers and innovation
in products, solutions and services will be decisive as to whether a
postal operator will be a successful and relevant market player in the
future.
3
2015 will be the first year
in a decade where
all Eurogiro members are using the same
version of the Eurogiro application.
This shows the significance of the upgrade
made to support the next generation of the
single point of settlement service. Eurogiro has
developed a function whereby each transaction
settled using the settlement service provider is
copied and sent automatically to the settlement
provider. Thereupon, the settlement service
provider immediately screens the transac-
tions against all applicable sanctions lists. A
set of procedures and messages have been
introduced to ensure that rejects resulting from
the sanctions screening are handled in an easy
and secure way. At the member meeting in
May 2015, 95% of all members using the Euro
settlement service provider stated that they
were already prepared for the launch of the
new service in June 2015.
Eurogiro’s Director of IT, Mr Uwe Holmsgaard,
also listed the following new features in the
Eurogiro system:
•
Support of single transactions (SWIFT
MT103) in the Eurogiro bulk environment
•
Facilitation of SWIFT standard implementa-
tion of Field59 F
•
Partly automating Eurogiro Quality Test
program to reduce manual work
•
New web portal for member info & process-
ing conditions
•
New option for connecting to the Eurogiro
network
Mr Bernhard Bukovc, Postal Innovation Platform.
Mr John Reis, Head of Retail for Canada Post Corporation.
Eurogiro News 7
