A report by the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General suggests that prepaid cards may be a way for the Post Office to increase revenues. The post office has been experimenting with offering gift cards and now may offer other types of prepaid cards also.
The report, titled Digital Currency: Opportunities for the Postal Service, makes the case that the USPS could and should be entering the digital payment and prepaid debit card market, as a way to both modernize the system’s services and to increase revenue.
While the Post Office has a number of strengths that it could bring to bear on a prepaid card program, the greatest being a wide spread infrastructure of offices and employees, it would likely face resistance from the industry, legislators, and political activists who would argue that it had an unfair advantage. Yet, because the Post Office is privatized, it makes sense for it to look for new ways to use its existing assets to be self-sustaining.
