The U.S. Postal Service could repurpose its existing infrastructure to provide innovative services that would yield new revenue, according to a white paper by the postal IG.
That was among the options raised in a study of how the agency can adapt for a changing environment that makes it increasingly difficult to maintain an overhead structure that was built for much higher volumes of mail. The white paper notes that USPS has a retail network with wide presence throughout the country that has a well established reputation for integrity and security.
“Post offices could become business centers by offering micro-warehousing, optimized packaging for shipping, and other business services. For citizens, post offices could act as community hubs and provide a front office presence for government field structures converting from brick and mortar to e‑government services,” it says.
Post offices already offer money orders and “could also provide other basic financial services such as check cashing, exchange services to make it easy to transfer between cash and digital payment methods, and reloadable payment cards for those who live outside the financial mainstream.”
Other options include continuing to downsize by closing yet more processing centers and other facilities—which USPS has planned for 2015—and adding new services that carriers could provide at the door or from the truck, such as selling stamps, recharging debit cards or processing passports.
The white paper is here: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library-files/2014/rarc-wp-15-003.pdf
