The UPU is committed to ensuring postal operators and their customers can access global markets through the most efficient and modern customs processes, including through the Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) model, which enhances visibility of the taxes and duties payable in advance and ensures the smooth processing of customers’ items through to delivery.
Cross-border e-commerce continues to grow rapidly, offering new opportunities for businesses globally. Customers have come to expect certainty, convenience and reliability in the purchase and delivery of their e-commerce items. They want to know what their item is going to cost them at the moment they order it.The postal sector is striving to provide greater transparency to customers – ensuring the network and the businesses it serves stay competitive. The UPU is developing a global delivered duty paid (DDP) solution to make this goal possible.
A DDP provides a secure and transparent solution to sustain that trust between customers and shippers. Implementing such a solution across the UPU’s postal network would give posts a competitive edge, helping to position them as the e-commerce delivery partners of choice for online sellers and their customers. This is a key aim of the UPU’s strategy for 2026-2029.
As the forum for postal cooperation connecting partners across the supply chain, the UPU is in an ideal position to provide a DDP solution that is standardized, will enable accurate duty calculations and facilitate the settlement process, while also being flexible and scalable enough to be rolled out quickly across the UPU’s diverse network of postal operators and partners.
Foundations in place
Several widely used UPU solutions already offer the necessary data flows and financial settlements needed to calculate the taxes and duties at destination, communicate customs data to origin and settle accounts.
The UPU’s Customs Declaration System (CDS) already facilitates communication between postal operators and Customs, enabling risk assessment and payment of customs duties and taxes for postal items. We’re enriching this system with integrations of third party APIs for the calculation of Landed Costs (i.e.: taxes and duties) and CDS works seamlessly with the UPU’s International Postal System (IPS), our end-to-end monitoring and data exchange platform.
In addition to these two tools, the UPU also has the experience to manage international settlements efficiently, having operated its own secure and centralized clearing house via the UPU*Clearing for more than 20 years.
This is a transversal priority, with the UPU’s operational and regulatory teams supporting the development of a DDP solution that meets the required standards.
Urgent consultation needed
Merchants, SMEs and postal operators are looking for solutions now, so we recognize the need to finalize the UPU’s DDP solution quickly to ensure members can reap its benefits with e-commerce partners.
Furthermore, the recent decision of the United States to end de minimis duty-free exemption for international postal shipments, and its associated requirements for the collection and remittance of customs duties, has accelerated the need for a rapid solution to ensure mail keeps moving efficiently and reliably through the international network.
We need the input of our members to identify country-level particularities so that our solution can flex to specific needs and remain scalable.
I encourage interested postal operators to get in touch as soon as possible so that we can conduct this consultation quickly.
The UPU Postal Technology Centre team will be available for consultation during the upcoming Universal Postal Congress in Dubai at a dedicated booth in the exhibition hall.
We look forward to seeing you there or connecting by AvsecD@upu.int.
David Avsec has worked with the UPU’s Postal Technology Centre (PTC) for nearly 30 years. Today, he manages the PTC’s products and account relations.