14-02-2019
With 4.4m tracked items passing through the network in January, the INTERCONNECT network reached a new record, continuing the strong trend seen in 2018.
When making a purchase online from another country, e-commerce customers have the same expectations as when they’re making domestic purchase. Cross-border delivery is, however, operationally significantly more complex. INTERCONNECT, through innovative postal solutions, streamlined processes, advance electronic data and high delivery reliability and quality, ensures that posts are meeting these expectations. This is perfectly in line with INTERCONNECT’s philosophy: providing a comprehensive response to meet and exceed the demands of the global e-commerce market. As confirmed by the latest IPC Cross-Border E-Commerce Shopper Survey, visibility of the delivery process is a key requirement for the consumer. To achieve that, INTERCONNECT, as a data-driven network, focuses strongly on ITMATT provision and the gathering and usage of data to better meet customer needs, e.g. through tracking, delivery choice and notifications.
Today, 30 posts are participating in INTERCONNECT. These posts account for 64% of e-commerce items delivered to a market of 544m customers.
Building on the positive trend, the INTERCONNECT network will continue to increase volumes by enlarging the network to more posts worldwide and introducing new functionalities such as Postal Delivery Duties Paid. This new service would allow for the payment of taxes, duties and handling charges at the point of purchase on the e-seller’s website, making available the payable amount to the destination post for payment to the customs. Such a service would reduce costs for the operators and increase speed and transparency for the consumers, enabling the postal industry to get a larger share in the growing e-commerce market.
As part of our ambition to grow the INTERCONNECT network, we have recently published a new leaflet, detailing the benefits of the network.