PostNord has confirmed that it will deliver its final letter at the end of 2025 and, from 2026, will focus its Danish business entirely on parcels. Letter volumes in Denmark have fallen by more than 90% since 2000, the nationwide obligation to provide letter services has been removed, and the numbers simply no longer add up.
For the postal world, this is more than a Danish story. It is a warning. Across Europe, regulators are openly questioning whether the classic universal service obligation (USO) that was designed for an era of daily letters is still sustainable. In the UK, for example, communications regulator Ofcom has already proposed and approved reforms that reduce letter delivery requirements while trying to keep the essence of the universal service intact.
The direction is clear. The question is, what comes next? If postal operators want to avoid a slow, unmanaged decline of their public role, they need to redefine universal service around how people actually communicate today. That means shifting from ‘universal access to letter delivery’ to ‘universal access to trustworthy communication’ – and putting a national digital postbox at the center of that promise.
When universal service outlives the letter
For decades, universal service was easy to picture. It meant postmen and postwomen on familiar rounds. It meant the quiet assurance that a letter could reach any address in the country for a predictable price and within a predictable time.
In many countries that vision is no longer realistic. People pay bills, sign contracts and deal with authorities online. They expect updates on their phones. The letters that still exist are often the hardest and most expensive to deliver. At the same time, maintaining the old model demands infrastructure and labor that are difficult to justify when most of the work has moved elsewhere.
Regulators see this tension. They hear from citizens who still value the post, but they also see usage data that no longer matches the traditional six-day, letter-first service pattern. That is why so many consultations now talk about modernizing or reforming universal service rather than preserving it unchanged.
What is often missing from the debate is a clear alternative. Scrapping daily letter rounds solves a cost problem, but it does not answer a more important question: How will every citizen and business receive the important information they need in a way they can trust?
This is where a digital postbox platform, operated with or by the national post, becomes more than a product. It becomes part of the new definition of universal service.
A different kind of universal service
A digital postbox platform is built for exactly the kind of communication that today’s posts struggle to support cost-effectively with paper alone. It provides a secure, verified alternative to email and ad-hoc portals, designed specifically for tax notices, banking information, insurance documents and other official messages.
Instead of asking citizens to keep track of a dozen different channels, a digital postbox gives them one place where serious messages arrive. Only verified senders are allowed in. Messages are protected, traceable and stored in a way that still makes sense years later.
Once you place that platform under the umbrella of universal service, the definition starts to shift. Universal service becomes the promise that every citizen and every business is entitled to a secure digital postbox for official communication, that important messages will reach that digital postbox reliably and can be retrieved when needed, and that people who cannot or will not use digital tools still have access through assisted, hybrid options.
Physical letters do not disappear overnight. They become the exception rather than the default, reserved for specific groups or situations where digital delivery is genuinely not possible or not appropriate.
This is not an abstract idea. It is already how communication works in some of the world’s most digital societies, where a national digital postbox platform has become standard infrastructure for citizens, businesses and authorities alike.
The key difference in a ‘life after letters’ scenario is that the post decides to own this infrastructure rather than watch it emerge elsewhere.
Why the post should be at the center of a digital-first USO
If you were starting from scratch and designing a trusted operator for serious digital communication, you would probably look for a few qualities.
You would want someone with a public-service mindset. You would want a brand that people already associate with official messages. You would want a nationwide physical presence that can support citizens who struggle online. You would want an organization that already sits between governments, banks, insurers, utilities and citizens.
In most countries, the national post still fits that description better than anyone else. Posts are used to being the neutral carrier rather than the content owner. They understand regulation and compliance. They know how to build services that work for cities and remote communities alike. That is why they are so well placed to operate a digital postbox platform as part of a modern universal service, or to work with a partner to do so.
From a citizen’s point of view, this would feel like a natural evolution. Instead of ‘If it has a stamp, it is official,’ the signal becomes ‘If it is in my digital postbox, it is official.’ The underlying trust is the same. Only the channel has changed.
From a sender’s perspective, it offers a clearer, more sustainable route than trying to maintain traditional letter networks at all costs. A secure digital postbox platform gives them a single, national, regulated channel for high-value communication, delivered under the familiar postal brand but powered by a digital backbone, such as the e-Boks postal-sector platform.
What a citizen-centered digital USO could look like
Imagine a citizen who used to rely on daily letter rounds. Bills, tax notices, municipal letters and bank statements arrived through the door. Some were lost. Some were misunderstood. Some arrived late.
In a digital-first universal service, that same citizen receives those documents in a secure digital postbox instead. They log in through a method they already know from other public services. The interface groups messages by sender and type. Important deadlines are highlighted. Old documents can be searched and retrieved before a call to a hotline or a visit to a branch.
If they are not confident with digital tools, their local post office can help them register, recover access or print a physical copy when needed. Family members can, where appropriate and permitted, support them in managing their inbox. For people in remote areas, the digital postbox can mean better access to up-to-date, official information than the old letter model ever provided.
The same structure works for small businesses. Instead of chasing envelopes and email attachments, they have a single, auditable channel where authorities, banks and partners deliver the documents that matter.
Behind the scenes, the post operates this service in line with strong privacy and security requirements, often in collaboration with a specialist platform provider. Articles such as Secure digital citizen communication for postal operators on the e-Boks blog can help frame this role and the underlying architecture.
Universal service becomes something citizens experience every time they open their digital postbox, not only when they hear letters on the doormat.
Learning from early movers
For postal operators watching PostNord’s decision and wondering what life after letters might look like in a more digital-first setting, it helps to look at markets that are already moving.
One recent example is Oman. Oman Post has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with e-Boks to establish and operate the country’s official national digital postbox. The service is designed as the secure channel for communication between public authorities, private-sector organizations and citizens, and is tied to wider national ambitions for digital transformation.
In that model, the national post remains very much at the center. It is the visible face of the service for citizens. It brings its understanding of local needs, its experience with regulated services and its existing branch and logistics network. The digital partner does the heavy lifting on the platform side – security, scalability, functionality – while the post keeps the trust relationship with users.
It is not difficult to imagine a similar approach in markets where universal service is under pressure. Instead of trying to preserve every element of the old letter-based model, posts can invest their political and financial capital in a new kind of universal service that is built for digital communication from day one.
A realistic path forward for postal leaders
Designing a digital USO around a national digital postbox does not have to be a big-bang reform. In practice, the most successful journeys into secure digital communication start small and grow with experience.
It often begins with a strategic decision at the top. The board and executive team agree that secure digital communication is part of the post’s core mission, not a side product. That clarity matters when regulators and stakeholders ask what universal service should mean in a world with fewer letters.
From there, operators can map where the pain is greatest today. Which types of letters create the most complaints and confusion? Where are the costs highest for the least visible value? Government-to-citizen letters are an obvious candidate, closely followed by banking and insurance documents. These become the first wave of senders for the digital postbox.
The next step is to choose how to deliver the service. Some posts might take the more expensive and time-consuming approach of developing the technology in-house. Others will prefer to work with an established platform (such as e-Boks) that already supports large national digital postbox solutions, is tailored to the postal sector and takes care of all security aspects of running digital post.
Pilots with a limited set of senders and regions can then test everything from citizen registration to call-center scripts. Branch staff can be trained to provide assisted digital support. Feedback from these early phases helps refine the service before it scales.
Throughout this process, communication is crucial. Citizens and businesses need to hear that this is not about taking something away, but about ensuring that important messages remain safe and reliable, even as letter rounds change or disappear. Concepts like Concepts like digital trust are useful internally, but externally it is enough to say: “If it is in your digital postbox, you know who sent it, you know it is genuine, and you know it will be there when you need it.”