I think USPS would have been in a great position to be an online identity depository and payment platform for consumer to business dealings. They should have done it 10 years ago.
Imagine an email like system where you and the companies you do business with can communicate, and you can pay them. Some sort of whitelisted communications channels, whereby when you enter in a service contract with a company, you also add them to this comm channel. No spam. Just valid communications and invoices. Verified identities and verified payments.
The USPS is in a great position for that sort of thing, being they actually come to your house every day. They already know who you are, and where you are. They have a pre-existing business relationship with every entity in the US.
Whereas now I have to tell my parents and grandparents to basically not believe anything they see in their email inbox -- it would be nice if a more secure channel existed. $250K startup -- get on it!
The USPS has a shitty track record for not spamming people. Maybe half of my mail is spam. While the USPS might have been in a position to do as you suggest for quite some time, the fact that they haven't indicates something, doesn't it?
The USPS (or Fedex or UPS or DHL or anyone else) were not conceived to be whitelisted services - they just deliver stuff. USPS does it cheaply, so bulk mailers use them. I don't know the rules and regs, I'm not actually sure the USPS has it within their control to white list actual mail.
I'm proposing a different service -- my main point being that because of who the USPS is, they'd have an enormous natural advantage to offer that type of whitelisted new service. The fact that its a no brainer and that nobody has done it probably means it is hard, more than anything. But it seems it would be easier for someone with the reach and institutional trust of a quasi govt organization (compared to a startup).
Perhaps the USPS would be more likely to do a better job in curtailing their reliance on bulk mailings if they had an exploding, high margin revenue base around ecommerce payment and being a more trusted, secure form of business communications channels. Mail spam sucks, but that is their revenue base. From their point of view, as an institution, they of course would like to see it replaced, institutions don't themselves like to generally just commit suicide.
Tech is what is going to replace them, at least attempting to transition to tech while leveraging what advantages they do have isn't a terrible idea -- because there quite possibly are some things they are able to uniquely bring to the table.
It's a hard problem because email is good enough for communications (the good is the enemy of the perfect) and any improvement in payment systems would require changes to major backend components of the banking system. The USPS brings legitimacy and business relationships to the table, but they're hamstrung by Congress and by the unions.
The best chance is if someone follows the Hulu model and immediately gets BOA, Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and US Bank to buy in from the get go. Even then it may require a regulatory change, but getting the top handful of American banks to buy in should be enough to build the necessary lobbying support.
Imagine an email like system where you and the companies you do business with can communicate, and you can pay them. Some sort of whitelisted communications channels, whereby when you enter in a service contract with a company, you also add them to this comm channel. No spam. Just valid communications and invoices. Verified identities and verified payments.
The USPS is in a great position for that sort of thing, being they actually come to your house every day. They already know who you are, and where you are. They have a pre-existing business relationship with every entity in the US.
Whereas now I have to tell my parents and grandparents to basically not believe anything they see in their email inbox -- it would be nice if a more secure channel existed. $250K startup -- get on it!