Australia Post unveils Apple Watch app

Australia Post has unveiled an app that enables customers to view delivery information and track their parcels on an Apple Watch. The app also lets customers use their mobile devices to open parcel lockers by scanning their watch.

The app syncs back to customers’ MyPost accounts, allowing them to collect parcels at up to 3,500 post offices and 200 secure parcel locker locations. Through their accounts, customers can also track, schedule or redirect many of their delivers and receive notifications when they have something to collect, the company said.

“The new Apple Watch app is the latest in a series of digital innovations Australia Post has been working on to provide easy to use experiences for customers who want greater flexibility in management delivery services,” Andrew Walduck, executive general manager, information digital technology at Australia Post, said in a statement.

Over the past two years, Australia Post has been forced to adjust in the online world as volumes and revenues from its traditional mail business continue to fall. In June 2013, Catriona Larritt, former GM, at Post Digital, said the company’s traditional mail business would lose $200 million in 2013, and the losses would get bigger as people move from physical to digital communications.

“Every one per cent of volume decline has a $20 million profit impact,” Larritt said at the time. “So every year, we need to find $100 million worth of cost savings or revenue growth just to get back to the start.”

Australia Post’s digital mailbox, MyPost, which first launched in 2012, lets customers receive statements and bills and make online payments on any internet-enabled device. In March, Australia Post signed an agreement with Westpac for the MyPost service.

Australia Post has posted a video previewing the new app.

Apple is taking online orders for the Apple Watch from today.

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