Royal Mail - PayPoint partnership - message from Parcels and Mails MD to Postmasters

Message from Neill O'Sullivan, Managing Director, Parcels and Mails, to Postmasters in response to an announcement made by Royal Mail and PayPoint on 22 February:

Today, Royal Mail announced that they will be partnering with PayPoint to offer limited Royal Mail services at selected Collect+ locations. We were informed of this news by Royal Mail last night, following the finalisation of the agreement with PayPoint.

Overview of partnership:

• Initially the services will be for click and drop acceptance items and home shopping returns only.
• The services are expected to start rolling out during March and Royal Mail expects to be live in around 5,000 Collect+ sites by the summer.
• In the future, Royal Mail may introduce collection services through Collect+ but they have shared with us that they currently have no plans to start Buy in Branch services.

I know you will have questions about what this new partnership means for you and your branches. My team and I will be looking at this in detail and will share more information soon.

The value of our network and knowledge and experience of you, our Postmasters, means we are the first choice of network partner for many other carriers. Over the past year, we have transformed Post Office’s mails offering, introducing competitive non Royal Mail products. We have also made a huge amount of progress with the expansion of PUDO services and the launch of Parcels Online and Buy in Branch.

We have some exciting launches coming up, including being able to sell Tracked 24/48 in branch in early April, the launch of digital capture for customs information in early March and working closely with Parcelforce to improve their collection services.

I hope this provides reassurance around today’s announcement and I will be in touch with a fuller update soon.

Best wishes,

Neill O'Sullivan
Managing Director, Parcels and Mails