Monday, May 18, 2009

Stamps.com Completes Market Test

Los Angeles-based Stamps.com, which provides online postage and personalized postage, announced this morning that the firm has successfully completed its market test of PhotoStamps. The firm said that the product is no longer in market test status, which it has been operating under since getting an approval from the U.S. Postal Service since 2004. Further details of the exit from market test were not given by Stamps.com. Stamps.com's PhotoStamps service allows consumers to upload any photo for inclusion on legal U.S. postage. The firm had been operating in an extension of a USPS market test since May of last year, which expired over the weekend, on May 16th. The firm said it shipped more than 70 million PhotoStamps to customers since 2005. The approval of the USPS is critical for Stamps.com, which saw a stall back in October of 2004 when the PhotoStamps service was halted for eight months after consumers were found to be uploading "inappropriate" images to the service. The USPS later reactivated the market test after Stamps.com implemented better screening of images.

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