Royal Mail adds barcodes to stamps for first time

How the new stamps will look with the barcode alongside them

Credit: Royal Mail

The barcodes are the latest in a line of efforts to help modernise Royal Mail. In October, it launched a parcel pick-up service that allowed postmen and women to collect returns from customers on their daily rounds.

Royal Mail also established a partnership with a host of drone companies to deliver parcels by air.

Nick Landon, the chief commercial officer at Royal Mail, said the new barcodes will make the company one of the world’s first to add the identifiers.

“By doing this, we are looking to transform the humble stamp so that we can offer our customers even more convenient, new services in the future,” he said.

“Royal Mail has a long and proud history for creating innovative and intuitive postal solutions. This goes all the way back to the Penny Black which established the principle of the one-price-goes-anywhere universal service – to the recent launch of Parcel Collect – where we pick up our customers’ parcels from the doorstep.”

Royal Mail is also expected to launch a trial of Sunday parcel deliveries in a bid to take on Amazon. From next month, parcels will be delivered across the country seven days a week.

Royal Mail was privatised by the coalition government and floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2013. ​