Partnership between Amazon.it and poste italienne
- Amazon.it is trailing Poste Italiane’s services for parcel deliveries. The online platform now proposes a payment option based on mobile POS devices. Purchasers can opt for this option when buying items online. Postal workers will be equipped with card acceptance terminals.
- Pilot tests have started in February and are to carry on this year with the help of 6,500 local post offices in towns counting more than 30,000 residents. If successful, these tests should later on be extended to 15,000 offices nationwide. For a start, this service is free, but customers should have to pay for it once the tests over.
- Likewise partnerships should soon make it possible for Poste Italiane to work with a larger number of e-merchants (Federazione nazionale dei titolari di farmacia italiani from federfarma.it, for instance, for customers to have their medicine delivered).
- As paper mail has been declining these past years (-30% planned over the next five years), postal services might see the e-commerce sector as a means to provide for its development: according to Netcomm Italia’s figures, mentioned by the FEVAD, the Italian e-commerce accounted for 6.6 billion euros in 2010 (+ 14%).
- Amazon.it was launched in November 2010 and opened its first Italian distribution centre in 2011; it has been managing the delivery of over one million stock-keeping unit sold on its website.
- Amazon.it enhances its range of options and enables its most worried customers not to enter their banking information online trough allowing them to pay upon delivery. This service is especially popular with online purchasers eager to check that their product complies with their expectations before paying. Other formats have also been tested so far: barcode or QR-code scanning, for instance, yet these solutions raise both logistical and security concerns (equipment provided to the delivery men).