Connect with us

Tech News

Swiss encrypted messaging service, ePost, targets one million postal users

Published

4 weeks ago

on

Swiss encrypted messaging service, ePost, targets one million postal users

Switzerland’s national postal service is aiming to have one million Swiss residents join its ePost encrypted communications service by the end of 2025.

Facing declining demand for traditional postal services, Swiss Post is banking on its ePost mobile app to fill the gap left by the decrease in traditional mail usage.

ePost is striving to become the primary app in Switzerland for individuals to communicate with banks, insurance companies, government entities, hospitals, as well as other organizations like clubs and societies.

The app provides Swiss citizens with a unified inbox for email, instant messaging, and electronic post, the ability to receive and pay bills, and the capability to store and access various documents, ranging from insurance quotes to medical records.

Claiming to be the first of its kind, the app has garnered interest from governments and postal services in Germany, France, and the Nordics, who are exploring the potential to develop similar apps.

Renato Stalder, CEO of ePost, informed Computer Weekly that the demand for the app has been increasing throughout 2024, with 15,000 to 25,000 new sign-ups each month, often through word-of-mouth referrals.

The decline of postal services

In 2000, Swiss Post recognized the need for a digital alternative as the volume of letters being sent in Switzerland started to decline rapidly due to the shift towards emails and text messages.


The use of traditional postal services is declining rapidly

Facing declining revenues, the government decided to establish a nationwide communications platform accessible to all residents of Switzerland and Swiss passport holders worldwide.

Swiss Post created ePost Service AG as a subsidiary to develop the technology, operating more like a startup to move quickly and attract skilled technology professionals.

See also  More than 1.5 million without power as Hurricane Milton slams Florida, causes deaths and flooding

To secure financial support, the new company had to identify an untapped niche in the market, as the business-to-business sector was already dominated by Microsoft technology and WhatsApp was the preferred app for personal messaging.

ePost’s innovative idea was to create an app that facilitates communication between Swiss citizens, businesses, government agencies, and other entities, offering secure communications, bill payments, contract signing, and document management.

Utilizing the open-source protocol Matrix for decentralized secure communications, ePost ensures interoperability without locking users into proprietary messaging services.

Digital post

Swiss Post initiated the development of a nationwide communications platform in October 2020, launching the app in July 2021 with the primary goal of providing a digital alternative to traditional mail.

Illustration of the services the ePost app brings together
The ePost app offers secure mail, digital post, and secure storage

The app’s business model, where the sender covers the cost while the public uses it for free, was not successful initially. Stalder admitted that their focus on digitizing traditional letters overlooked the changing preferences of the public, who were leaning towards email and instant messaging.

After six months, only 50,000 people had downloaded the app, as it lacked compelling features to attract users, and businesses were reluctant to adopt digital post as a new communication channel.

Back to the drawing board

ePost went back to the drawing board to enhance the app, incorporating secure messaging, email, document storage, digital document signing, and bill payment features.

The service offered cloud-based software for small and medium-sized companies to manage customer relationships and on-site servers for larger enterprises.

Despite the updated version’s release in 2024, attracting companies and Swiss citizens to join the app posed a challenge. It became a “chicken and egg problem” where companies hesitated to sign up without a substantial user base, and citizens were not interested without a wide range of participating companies and government organizations.

See also  Chinese spies target vulnerable home office kit to run cyber attacks

The potential upside was the opportunity for the first company to solve this problem to establish a monopoly.

Stalder emphasized that the approach is winner-takes-all.

The initial goal set by Stalder was to onboard two banks, two insurance companies, and two regional government Cantons. The app was designed to entice businesses with branding that mirrors their physical letter branding, including color schemes and logos. It also provided a secure alternative for staff who may use non-work apps like WhatsApp for official communications.

Financial organizations expressed concerns about employees using WhatsApp and similar messaging services, despite their end-to-end encryption. Stalder noted that the lack of message records in company archives could pose challenges in disputes, such as accusations of bad financial advice.

Businesses found the app’s features appealing, as it aimed to offer the same convenience as WhatsApp without the associated risks. Users could communicate with various entities, receive and manage digital documents, pay bills, and digitally sign contracts within a single inbox.

Furthermore, the app enabled users to easily locate documents, tag them for organization, and access necessary receipts for tax purposes. Stalder highlighted the app’s ability to provide digital signatures for incoming documents, ensuring their authenticity and integrity.

Looking ahead, ePost is focused on expansion and aims to reach one million users by 2025. Plans include integrating secure encrypted email into the platform and enhancing unified communication capabilities. The addition of application programming interfaces (APIs) will facilitate the integration of other software applications, such as Microsoft Teams.

Despite technical challenges like message delivery issues when users log out of the app, Stalder remains optimistic about resolving them due to the high demand for solutions. Reflecting on lessons learned, he emphasized the importance of starting with email and messaging services over replicating physical letters electronically to better meet client needs and expectations. Please rewrite this sentence.

See also  One Million Checkboxes players hid binary, QR codes and rickrolls among the boxes during its two week war
Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Trending