Post offices are the most outdated systems across the country. Last year, I was dealing with lots of postal requirements, and it was very frustrating to deal with things that were manual and not even digital. One thing that was very annoying was the fact that I had to deal with cash a lot. I couldn't pay anything using digital payments. Today, I'm glad to read that the Indian postal department is upgrading its IT systems to start accepting payments using UPI, a unified payment interface that is very successful and almost available in all parts of India.
Looks like it is not only for making posts, but for most of the things we do in postal departments, there would be UPI acceptance. Currently, when we do a post, there is no information available to tell us where the package is exactly at. The department is going to get an upgrade in not only payments, but also to notify us or tell us where the package is and how to track the package. This will involve a lot of IT infrastructure changes for the department. I'm glad that the government is considering this and trying to make this improvement.
This system is called Advanced Postal Technology (APT) and it has already been roleld out to some of the cities like Chennai and Mumbai. The postal department is saying that not only to the metro cities, but soon this will reach all parts of India. The news says that about 86000 post offices across India have already had this upgrade. This initiative is done by the Ministry of Communication, and they say that this new system is robust and provides an enhanced user experience, keeping customers first. Real-time tracking is one of the key highlights of this upgrade, which everyone thinks is very important in this modern world.
Some cool features will include OTP based authentication and tracking, Digital payments using UPI, and other digital means. There will also be an open API available that can be consumed by other application that would like to provide third party support. There will also be an additional support available for customers who are doing bulk posts or people who make use of the postal services in bulk. Last time when I checked, the bulk services also needed an upgrade, and there was no special support for such services. Now that things have improved, it is going to be very great.
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