Saudi Post Signs Deals on Electronic Services
The Saudi Postal Incorporation signed two memoranda of understanding on postal money services with Egyptian and Yemeni counterparts in the two-day 1st International Postal Information Technology Conference that ended last Thursday 15th November. More than 400 companies from 140 countries took part in the international conference.
The first memorandum was signed between Mohammed Saleh Benten, president of the Saudi Postal Incorporation and his Yemeni counterpart Mohammed Ali Marghani on providing postal money services, followed by another memorandum signed between Benten and his Egyptian counterpart Alaa Fahmi for the same facility.
Saudi Postal president also signed another memorandum to establish an electronic market with a number of Saudi companies.
Universal Postal Union Director General Edouard Dayan emphasized the importance of postal companies to compete in money transfer services with global banks, noting that postal services should be a facilitator of E-commerce, citing the role of postal companies in Amazon.com’s global success.
Cathy Rogerson, director of IBM, pointed out that the future of postal services whether in the Kingdom or worldwide would depend heavily on the transformation of postal companies into diversified businesses.
More importantly, postal companies should increase their investment in technology in order to be able to compete with banks in providing financial services to their customers, saying that financial posts are no more calling themselves as postal companies but rather as postal banks.
Saudi Postal recently released project “Waseel” (which translates reached), Benten said, features an address system that can be read electronically whatever the language or origin of the sender, to which Dayan quipped, “if we cant reach the address we cant deliver.”
Benten added that a number of countries have requested to be granted the rights to implement the Saudi-owned technology.
He said that the Saudi Postal service is currently cooperating with the other GCC countries to implement “Waseel” Project.
Microsoft and Cisco presented their IT solutions in the conference.
