Okay, we are coming now to our second session of today which is about game-changing emerging technologies. So, as you are well aware, the UPU with its members has been regularly studying and analyzing and researching new technologies and also opportunities such as the potential of innovative solutions in the area of Postal Digital Financial Services, in the area of artificial intelligence or the latest research piece that we have seen opportunities in the area of blockchain. We all know also that emerging technologies have really the power to reshape our industry in a way that has not been possible before. So for example, interest in blockchain and in other distributed ledger technologies has been growing over the past few years and more and more posts are experimenting and trying to find different use cases for these new technologies. So we'll discuss here with our panelists in this second session how emerging technologies can help the Postal ecosystem to create an even stronger network and to seize also unique opportunities for the posts their customers and societies alike. So let me introduce the panelists that we have here with us. We have Salih Khan. He's the Program Manager of Financial Inclusion at the UPU. We have Anissa Kaltani. She's the CEO of Alpenia Post. We have Ian Strohler. He's partner at Analysis Mason. And we have Ricardo Simoesh, Executive Director from the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications. And as in our first session, we also start here with a few interventions from our panelists and we'll then start the discussion. So may I ask Salih maybe that you take the floor first, please. Thank you very much Bernard for that. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure for me to be here and addressing all of you on the kind of work that we're doing at the UPU on emerging technologies and the kind of research that we actually want to lay for our partners going forward. So if you look at this slide, it gives you a gamut of the kind of work that we're doing in the financial inclusion research space and I will start with financial inclusion because that is a program I had at the UPU but in the end, you'll see that we are touching upon a number of vital postal areas when we go forward. So when we started our journey at looking at what we call over the horizon visioning at UPU. Our plan is to look at the kind of technologies and solutions that's emerging that will benefit our partner posts in the years to come. And our mandate at the UPU is to sort of lay the groundwork, the kind of, I would say that the kind of thoughts and the kind of blueprints that you need to implement all of these solutions and technologies and look at the pros and cons as you go about it. So from a research perspective, we started with looking at a very esoteric and interesting topic. What is the role of trust in postal systems and post offices in building up a digital financial system? And we found that, you know, given the, like our colleague in Zimples was saying, the role of the post is so embedded in society that you are inherently a part of the fabric of society and people trust the postal system to deliver a wide range of goods and services including financial services and digital financial services. So what we posited in our research is that if you improve and increase your trust with communities, with people, then your uptake in digital financial services will actually be positively impacted. That's what we started with. Then we looked at the drivers of innovation for postal digital financial services and we will touch upon this very briefly in the next slides. We looked at the use of cryptocurrencies by post. This was part of our working group with the ITU. We are part of the digital work currency working group at the ITU and we did a white paper to again posit what could be the use of cryptocurrencies in the post. All of this is available for download on our website and I invite all of you to take a look at it. The fourth paper that we just published is around the use of blockchains. Enabling a sustainable postal future and we will talk about this again in the next slides and we looked at both postal logistics as well as postal financial services to see what the value proposition is and in our roadmap coming ahead we want to look at the triangles between posts, digital financial services and SMEs as well as digital financial services posts and gender inclusion in the coming months and years and we will be publishing these. So looking at the first study that we did on innovating postal financial services, we looked at the postal digital journey which again some of our colleagues spoke about before Paul is our expert on postal digitization and what we tried to do is bring his perspective onto financial services and inclusive financial services and we found that the postal digital journey is actually in four steps and across 192 member countries that we have, one of the challenges that we face is that this is a non-homogeneous cohort so people are at different levels of digitization and so our interventions have to be paced in a way that is actually commensurate to the digital maturity of the post and we work with them in these levels and what we did was then talking to both internal participants at the post and to the ecosystem players, we find that there are six major levers for driving postal financial services innovation and those factors are which the post can control themselves, which is around people, processes and customers and then you have the factors that is outside their controls largely around policy regulations, markets and emerging technologies and we focus at emerging technologies on the next topic as always. So this is the critical one that actually brought Bernard and us in contact to present at this panel and we looked at what have the posts been doing, what have all the posts been doing around the world in terms of blockchains and DLTs and we find that at least seven posts have conducted 14 different projects around the world of course, what's missing here is now the poster child for blockchain in the postal sector, Simba from La Poste France that was not so visible when we were doing the research but you will see that these posts have done at some level some kind of analysis and some kinds of pilots and so we find that within the postal ecosystem there is an appetite for exploring this topic. There is an appetite for seeing what can be done in terms of leveraging DLTs and blockchains to benefit the postal customers and in terms of innovating the kind of solutions that can be bought to market through the posts. Now this study actually focused on two different axes. One was to see how blockchains can benefit postal logistics which is the core business of the post and then how can blockchains benefit postal financial services. So from a postal logistics perspective we find six potential use cases around block chaining if you will, the certificates of origin, digital PO boxes, crypto stamps which is probably the most mature case right now, reverse logistics, customs and handling, track and trace. These are the six areas that we thought were the most potent potential and useful cases for using blockchain within the postal logistics ecosystem and in our study we explored this in some detail and we posed it what the potential opportunities are for each one of them. For postal financial inclusion we identified seven potential use cases. Of course this is my area so I can talk a bit more about it. We find that collective insurance, managing direct cash transfer projects, digital wallets using DLTs, personal to government payments, identity management, remittances and transactional information management are the most potential use cases. You'll see the stars next to identity management. Direct cash transfer projects and remittances. We've actually developed blockchain blueprints for these three areas. So these are detailed blueprints that Pulse can use in designing their own blockchain enabled products and services. We are about to launch this. We hope to launch this within the next few months and what we hope to do is spur our postal partners to think about implementing these blockchain projects. We want to twin them with potential investors and donors and we want to start pilot projects around these if we can. So that's in a nutshell where we are in terms of our research, in terms of our thinking and in terms of what we want to do with our co-partners going forward. So thank you very much. Bernat, I'll hand it back to you. Thank you. Okay, please. Anisa, our second speaker. So good morning everyone. I have decided to open my speech in different languages just to show the power of UPU representing 197 countries. So Mirmjes is in Albanian for everyone. Sabah Alkayar. I don't know if the pronunciation is okay, but Arabic, Guten Morgen. Goy more merhaba. Bonjour. Dobre utre. Buenos dias. And so many other languages. That's the power of UPU. And I would like very much to know how many representatives from postal operators are in this room. The only thing in common that we have is that we do speak the same language. And that is how we understand each other in each of the challenges that we are facing. The governors that we need to meet every day to change policies. And at the same time regarding the regulations that you all know. My presentation right now is simple. It offers a simple question, actually digital versus analog. I didn't went through a typical template of the post, traditional post, but I'm gonna open up a speech actually with some key concerns about the good side of being digital and the normal side of being analog. So right now most of the posts have succeeded by being analog because the target group that we have, the customers that we purchase are basically the ones that are above 45 years old. So when it comes to customer retention and customer target, that makes a difference in the sense of drafting the necessary strategies among us. Of course that we do believe that the benefits of digital transformations are a lot. Of course that there are enhanced data collection, stronger resource management, data driven insights, something that some operators are missing. Of course that we consider better customer experience if we go completely digital. We have an increased agility that we don't know whether our teams are able to transform themselves into our agile company. And at the same time, it increased productivity. Those are the benefits of basically being a digital company. But from the other side, we have the traditional. We were so good during the COVID area. We were the only one up in the market serving our customers, serving the people. And it was the only human touch that during the COVID area, most of us faced was the postman. The postman is everywhere in each of our front offices is the one who knows the story of the customer, something that companies nowadays, even though they are digital, are spending millions of money and euros just to have this customer experience and customer targeted. Are we eager to be transformed completely into a digital company? Or is it okay that we switch through this analog to digital more smoothly? Imagine ourselves nowadays with a postman completely in a hologram coming to your front office and bringing you a pack. Is that human touch that valuable? And I think this is the question that each of the postal operators, but not only even the companies need to take in consideration while they offer good trends, let's say, and good customer experience for our companies. Of course, that the postal sector has been going through different ways of change. And we already know the steps that we were following. 1990s to 2005, there was productivity and diversification. So those two areas were posed basically focused themselves by being more into automation processes. And of course that we moved on up to 2015 digital to core because we wanted ourselves to be more involved into transforming our companies and providing those digital tools at the core of our businesses. And of course that 2015 and onward is this digital as a mindset. But what does it mean digital as a mindset? Are we ready to change the social attitudes of our companies and people that we serve as well as customers? And at the same time, is our purpose the same if we completely being transformed into someone digital? Do we speak the same language? Are we the same as our main competitor? I don't want to mention names, but we know who are our competitors. They are very keen because they are very structured. They don't care about rules. They have all the things outsourced. They live in this circular economy that we think that we provide the circle economy assets. But I believe that our competitors are better doing it. And of course that most of our competitors speaks with the same language, the same brand identity. The same offset of the stores. Of course they are one stop shop. They offer one exclusive services and that's why they are very successful in the market and they are getting these customers from us. While we, we believe to be one stop shop for most of our customers, but we are not defined whether we are exclusively number one in postal sector or are we tending to move exclusively number one in financial services and offering the inclusion for different target groups that we have. And then we come to e-commerce. Most of the companies thinks about e-commerce and that's the power of us as a mobile operators. Personally I am critical a little bit about the processes of e-commerce in different countries. Why? Because we are providing kind of marketplace, differentiated marketplace. While the UPU should offer a platform for all operators to speak the same language and become one marketplace. It's not being the best among many. It's being the best among many bests that we have. So if we want to compete with our main competitor that is also part of the panel tomorrow discussion, are we eager to be the same as him? To speak the same language, provide the same attitudes and stuff. What we did in Albania, of course, that we are working for e-commerce and especially in automation of the parcel processing, continued innovation receiver apps and integration with operation systems. But what we did is that we want to boost sales through the app. So we didn't define actually us being analog, us being transformed into digital tools, but we wanted to have a targeted audience mission which means that we want to speak to real humans, no fake emails as many other providers are doing, no multiple accounts. So every marketplace you go, you got multiple accounts and then you forget the password and you cannot proceed the payment. It's the same like PayPal, why PayPal was very successful. All your accounts are with one username and account. And that's the reason why the e-commerce should be a marketplace driven by UPU that speaks the same language for all the mobile operators. And of course that we want to have real time segmentation in different countries based on the customer behavior. We need to have website browsing behaviors that if we speak the same language might be the same, but if we are different, they are different customer behaviors. And at the same time, we want to boost our return on investments based on customer journeys. How many mobile operators right here, postal operators do care about the customer journey? We just consider the customer coming in our office, making a transaction and leaving. We don't have that much data analytics behind the services that we offer in our shops and that's the reason why the post is still linked with the government rather than being a completely sustainable, self-sufficient company which cares about profits and not about just offering the universal services. Then it comes to post-arrotail. Of course, this is one of the big challenges knowing the fact that with the e-commerce and with the things that all the governments are now moving into completely digital area, so the momentum for delivering the letter and papers, it's not on our side, which means there is the reason why we need to be transformed into a complete digital company, which means logistic need to be improved, we need to offer banking services and of course the concept of digital box might be one of the areas that most of us should target while we face a decreased decline in our services. And then when I speak about new trends, of course that I take in consideration the fact that I do care about customer experience because even though the position of CEO of a company is linked with the governor, I believe that posts need to be considered real business, which means that we need to care about the customer journey, we need to care about customer experience, we need to care about the internet of things, customers want us to be with physical front offices, but at the same time, they want us to provide the services immediately linked also to the banking sector. And of course that with the drones, I believe that Albania is one of the few countries actually which is experiencing right now the first legislation which allows the drones actually to be linked with the postal operation and that's the reason why we have made the first testing of drones and very soon we are going to launch it in Albania and become a momentum actually, also for other operators to join. I think that my timing is off because it's 000, but this is one of the things that makes a big difference for our companies, the drones, and it's touchable, people would love it, why? Because it's modern and everyone would love to have a drone and something being delivered in his balcony because that is a good story for Instagram and Facebook, not for the services. So we need to change a little bit the mentality of all the products and services that we are offering. And that's the reason why we moved to dedicated app offering one-stop shops for all the customers in Albania and not only they can pay the utility bills and everything else through a unique app that I think most of the operators already have in place. But what did change? We are very keen and we are very much looking to host a big event in the upcoming January by launching the first social card, targeting the pensioners, the retirees. We have more than 800,000 customers actually that are basically our customers that don't care about digitalization, they care about getting the money and on the safe hands of a postman or on the safe side of a post office. Of course that we believe that posts are the second biggest contributor to financial inclusion worldwide, this is statistics. Post enables and provides infrastructure for rural developments, something that our competitors even imagine to go through. We have trust and that is one of the things that I do believe Mr. Kana already expressed is basically our absolute advantage in the market and post can drive financial inclusion for women, something that banks are don't even considering it, but we can target women in financial inclusion and that could be our absolute advantage. Post are the tool for bridging digital divide for underserved population like the retirees, they never used to have an account, but now with the post office they are going to have one and post provide the cheapest scheme for remittances which is something that we should all believe that we are very unique and our focus and strategy should be based on remittances for the customer that we serve and based on World Bank statistics the average cost is 5%. That's the reason why with very good partnership with MasterCard and Visa we are issuing the first card targeting 800,000 customers which is nearly a million. That makes a difference in terms of politics by providing financial inclusion, in terms of revenues and profits for the company, in terms of scheme of remittances, but far most in terms of brand and image and trust that we give to people by being transformed completely in a digital asset. Thank you. Again, please. Thank you very much. Good morning. Could you reset the timer please? Thank you. So, good morning. Analysis Mason, we are strategy, regulation and policy consultants. I've worked for Analysis Mason for 24 years and in that time I've been leading projects in the telecoms and postal and parcel sectors across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. So, you'll all be aware of some of the new technologies which we are now seeing coming into the pipeline and many of those will be on display in the trade show this week. Some of those cover the demand side where customers interact with the services. Many of these new technologies cover the logistics pipeline, so robotics, IoT, autonomous vehicles and the like. And, of course, holding all of this together is data and data analytics. But I wanted to touch upon a few of the enabling technologies. So, you won't see these technologies in physical space. They are digital advanced technologies. And just three of those technologies to touch on here. 5G mobile services. So, you'll be aware of 4G mobile and many countries now are licensing spectrum for 5G. This brings low latency, reliable communications to mobile networks and support for massive machine networks. Private mobile networks are a development for mobile services as well, where a private network can be established. That brings security and capacity guarantees, but it can be costly to secure a private network due to the occupancy of the capacity. And we'll talk a bit in a moment about blockchain. So, distributed ledger technologies, which replace the traditional database. These have various detailed and important benefits, but they have some specific drawbacks, I think, which are relevant for the global postal industry. So, are the game-changing technologies well, robotics, IoT, and autonomous vehicles, they will be supported in different ways by 5G and maybe by private networks. They will radically change the supply side of our industry in advanced countries, country by country, as those technologies are taken up. Blockchain is useful and important for many data-driven applications, and that can be used and invented in many different segments of the industry and also niche applications. So, these can be potentially game-changing for those areas of the sector, but if we're talking about a global or a national solution, there are challenges to be overcome. So, some of those benefits of blockchain are highlighted here, and they sound very impressive. They cover all the things you would want, a database or data technology to cover, security, convenience, in particular, it allows people to interact with each other through a transparent and decentralized database. There isn't a centralized database that has to be managed. The blockchain-distributed database provides the detail of whatever is happening to anybody who is using the technology to run their business or run their part of the network. It's also a very resilient system because it's a distributed technology by its design and would include, of course, encryption and security aspects as well. And we've seen in the finance sector that it can significantly reduce the costs of running a global industry, removing the previous high-cost intermediary of international banks. But there are some specific challenges in adopting blockchain and distributed technologies. And the main one, I think, for the postal and parcel and career sector is technology itself. It is a technical and data equipment processing intensive technology, and it has to be adopted and implemented completely within that part of the ecosystem. By its design, you can't easily mix a blockchain technology with an old technology. It's designed to be the digital database technology at the heart of the application. We also need to think about regulation. Public adoption is interesting as well. We all know of cryptocurrency speculation and some of us will be embracing that speculation and some will be wary of it. But when it comes to critical national infrastructure and national services, we would want to be sure that it is well-regulated and well-adopted. There may be a question about energy consumption, although that is something which the technical teams can potentially solve. When it comes to implementation, it's primarily a switch between old-style digital database technologies which might be hosted on equipment or in the cloud to one which is distributed into the distributed processing space that runs blockchains. And that means the organizations that are moving to distributed technologies will be reducing their own digital service purchase, but they will be replacing it with development of applications, development of coding and development of the actual technologies which are then released onto the distributed processing. I won't go into detail on this slide because we've seen some of the applications mentioned already today, but there are good examples of blockchain solutions being developed in postal logistics and some of those are quite interesting because it allows potentially crypto stamps and digital stamps and maybe crypto packaging, digital-enabled packaging to be used to convey items all over the world without any need of a central database and that system would be trusted and would work seamlessly globally. But the final question there is, as I'm sure you're thinking, will these be a global success? Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ian. Riccardo, you want to pick up our theme, please. So thank you first and foremost for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here at UPU World Leaders Forum. Thank you all for coming. My name is Riccardo Simons. I'm Executive Director of INATBA. INATBA is International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications. And INATBA is a global association of companies, public bodies and academics that aim to pave the way to mass adoption of blockchain and DLT technologies, distributed ledger technologies. We are doing that by through providing a multi-stakeholder platform to discuss and to produce leadership, thought leadership outputs to regulators and to policymakers, bringing industry players, private players and public bodies and academics into the mix and coming up with this extremely valuable content in terms of outputs. We are also converging the industry into a sustainable development and one that is positive and constructive. We upskill and we try to foster upskill the education in terms of digital space. INATBA is in a European consortium, chase to monitoring and to provide skilled content on digital topics. And last but not least, we liaise and identify and liaise use cases in blockchain and provide them with the tools that they need to develop. So about blockchain, I was a little bit uncertain of what do you know about blockchain? I was a little bit uncertain of what do you know about blockchain and perhaps the most known part is actually cryptocurrencies, but blockchain can enable the transfer and the storage of value and data in a very secure manner that can be used in different sorts of applications. For instance, regarding even some of the regulation that is being bring forward that will impact the industry in terms of SEGs, measuring SEGs from water consumption or energy consumption in different countries, bringing it to a register, not in a declarative way, but in a quantitative way that can really measure that information, is perhaps one of the potential users. So that's one of the use cases. But also, we have, blockchain is not, blockchain is actually being highly considered by the European Commission, for instance, in the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure. That is a blockchain from the European Commission that wants to address different public services that can be converged into these non-fragmented by every country blockchain. So other possibilities, other possibilities as, actually it's not a possibility, the fact that blockchain is here to stay is also the latest, one of the challenges that was mentioned in the presentation before was the lack of regulation around the financial and the digital assets and crypto assets space. The fact is, this year, the first framework of regulating crypto assets service providers has come out, is known as Mika, Markets in Crypto Assets. And it's perceived from the industry point as the global standard for financial, for crypto finance, let's take that like this. And it will bring forward the fact that industry, industry players, all industry players, can and should, it can allow for new players and that's thinking of a post to enter in the space of providing crypto services. So this is what I want to say, I welcome all the questions. I'm not, I don't have experience on the post sector per se, but I will be around and welcome all the questions. Thank you very much, perfect. So just one small thing before we start with the discussion questions, if you have a question and you want to submit it whilst web card, that is possible, as I said, but you have to write the question into the right session. So otherwise I can't see it. So apparently there were before questions, but in the wrong session, so then they won't pop up here. Let me start with one question. I mean, you have touched upon it several speakers here. I mean, you started with explaining there have been so many countries already doing something in the area of blockchain, for example, testing, pilots, even starting in 2015 and so, so quite impressive. You haven't said whether anything was implemented then, so it was just pilot, but whether it has been implemented, we don't know. The question is, we're talking so much about blockchain and those huge opportunities and you know, you see those lists with all those bullet points where you see many, many advantages and you think it's a no-brainer, you do it. It's replacing so many old technology, it's so much faster, but quite frankly, we don't see so much of the output. We don't see so many postal companies that have implemented blockchain technology for different kinds of services in those logistic streams in the supply chain. We see something here and there, but not in a vast sense as one might expect. Why is that so? Who wants to say why is that so? Perhaps not in the sense of the core service of the post, but we see growing adoption of, for instance, NFTs and stamps as NFTs collectibles that is gaining a lot of traction. We have, inside of the association, we have La Post and we have Emirates Post that have a very ambitious NFT goals using NFTs as a form of interface to provide collectibles in terms of stamps. And quite recently, actually last week I was in Lichtenstein and I heard of, and I talked to a company that is providing service for the Lichtenstein Post that is all about actually providing a digital twin of the physical stamp, of the physical stamp that can be, at the same time, traced and bring on all the story and the traceability of the stamp. There are some solutions that are already being implemented and we are seeing lots in terms of that. So I think Bernadette, that's a very interesting question and we need to look at it from the perspective of what both our colleagues said here. I mean, the first thing to consider is that you have to start with pilots when you get a new technology. You cannot just jump in, spend billions of dollars and find out that, okay, maybe not. So we do see a laundry list of different use cases that were explored by post, by experimentation, by doing pilots. Probably the most mature case, as Ricardo mentioned, is in crypto-filatelie. You have Wall Street Post, you have other Post, Emirates Post is going into it as well. La Post France is doing it in terms of logistics. Swiss Post is doing it for logistics. So there are fragmented uses of it. But as our colleague mentioned, perhaps this is not as yet a game-changing, proven technology that calls for mass adoption. I think we are at a cost where we haven't reached the tipping point yet. People are looking at it. There are potential uses of it, but it hasn't reached a stage where it's like, okay, yeah, we are all going to do this, right? It will get there. So I personally think we are in the early stages of actually taking these interesting, new innovative technologies and trying to bolster them on to a number of different businesses, including the postal business. And I think the robust, granular, implementable and scalable business cases are out there and yet to be proven. I think there's two parts of it. Either it's a new revenue generating service and for that you can see a more sort of standalone business case. It will come down to the business case, as you say. When the proof of concept is there, then you need a real business case and someone needs to adopt it. If it's revenue generating for a new service, then it's standalone. I think the harder challenge and the thing which will take much longer is where it's a cost saving because it's right in the heart of the industry and there are many cost challenges already just in the existing traditional segments and so the effort and the thinking needed to say, okay, well, actually this new technology can allow us to take out all of that and replace it with this, this blockchain DLT solution needs a very large sort of critical mass of a business case. So we might see it in places like, as you just mentioned, the European Converged Public Services area. So maybe someone like IPC or a group of developed posts will get together and say, right, we can do this and we can slice this out of our business and save our cost. But that's the much harder question is to use it to reduce costs in the industry. I can comment a little bit on that but basically on history. I'm very fan of the history of the post, how it was created dating back to 2,500 years before Christ in Egypt and then in Roman Empire. So everything was about communication. So even right now, when we speak about cryptocurrency or crypto stamp and stuff, we are targeting a very small and limited quantity of customers which believes and lives in this bubble of dreams where everything is digital and everything is like within the blockchains. While our customers itself are not targeted by the concept of blockchain, both in terms of security and in terms of touchable. We want things to be touchable. The everything in the world right now, because we live in a momentum of financial crisis, we live next door to the world. So nothing is safe. Even this digital thing and this game changing of moving into the blockchain, it's not 100% safe. We saw many historical data and point of view of how the system was evolving because of some national crisis which belongs to the security, to the war, to the financial crisis. It cost a lot. Right now we are facing energy crisis as well. So blockchain, one of the main points of them is energy. So who is gonna pay for this energy? So we never know. You see all those business cases are within five years they change completely the model in which they operate. While the post is still the same even though we date back 2,500 years before Christ. And that's a big difference. Yeah, and what you just said that there is this risk jumping, we're jumping into new technologies and it's going extremely fast and there is a question here that came in in this respect which was kind of saying or asking how can we best protect ourselves and our customers taking into account this cybersecurity risk that we are facing with this rapid transformation to digital. How can we protect ourselves and our customers? Who wants to? Well, I think Paul talked about our cybersecurity program and what the UP does to help the posts around it. But again, risks are inherent in any business. If you go full old school money and I used to run microfinance banks so I can tell you what cash management is. And carrying sacks of cash to villages Kabul and outside Afghanistan, it's not the safest of business. There are different levels of risks in us as institutions and us as stewards of public trust and the post as enablers of development and human growth. We have to ensure it, right? It is inherent upon us to ensure that we provide this level of trust and security towards our clients to make sure that whether you have a debit card, whether you have cash in your hand or whether it's an ether, it's in your wallet, it's all secure. The post provides you with that security. Okay. Graham, you had a question, so from the audience, third row, please. Yes, so Graham Lee. Yeah, Anisa, my question was to you. I thought it was very impressive, your presentation. Particularly what you said about the 800,000 people that would be effectively included in financial services. But what I was wondering about that was that I just did a quick sort of calculation, thinking if each of those customers has 100 euros on their card, then that's 80 million euros. What is Albania Post going to do with that money to, A, in one sense, to protect it, but B, to actually utilize the money? Is it something that the Post will utilize or will that actually go effectively into government covers? So we learned from the mistakes of other operating companies while they launched the same product as us. So in the first piloting phase, we are entering into an agreement with most of the banks in Albania. So they are going to provide all the necessary tools and security safety tools for the product to be launched safely. And the money that comes for social insurance scheme is part of the government money. So we want to assure that they are treated fairly. There is risk upon the business case. And at the same time, we are offering the opportunity to everyone to get the shares based on the contract that they had before, based on the several research that we have done. We had problems like with Ireland, when she went through Wirecard and Wirecard then got bankrupt. So millions of customers were left without the account. So we couldn't take the same risks. And that's the reason why we decided to be in a joint cooperation with the banking sector. I've seen there was another hand raised. Can we bring the microphone? Is there after this one another question? Okay, one more. Okay. We don't have time. You gave me. Yeah, I'm Alexander from Post Plus. I'm sorry that I can't ask any questions about blockchain and modern stuff. So probably something back to the basics. Anisa, I would like to make a reference to your presentation when you told that most of the postal operators would now have a mobile application. Did I understand correctly? We have a mobile application that provides the services for the government. But did you say that most of the posts would have it already? The? Most of the posts would have it already. Yeah, most of the posts, yeah. I think that most of the operators here already have an app which offers it. But then I started thinking about the functionality. Yeah, I have come across a lot of the postal applications that would provide it racking, some limited functionality. But what about the basics? What do you think how many, or if anybody would have a statistics, how many other mobile applications that would support sending a parcel, filling in the label, maybe taking a picture of the content, and all this stuff? That's my question. If you think about, okay, the application is basically for financial sector and we are offering in one stop shop for financial services and also just a view on terms of tracking the parcel. If you believe that there are no apps in terms of parcel mail logistic, that's true because that is basically dealing with sensitive data and data protection, which is something that we cannot give the rights even through a different app and user to make it. So that's briefly my question. And also in terms of blockchain and also in terms of data security and stuff, you always should think about the opposite, the risk that you are taking by moving to another platform. Like even though nowadays, most of the people are going through blockchains, NFTs, and stuff, they are buying even properties which believes in the air and stuff next to the famous Hollywood people and the rest, but you should understand that based on some statistic that I got from construction companies, we are building each month a city equal to New York. So even though people are buying online, that doesn't mean that we are not going to have real estate going on from the other side. So we should find a balance that could target necessarily our customers, basic customers. And as I said in the presentation, most of the operators are targeting a customer level which is above 45, while the application is just for retaining the youngster. So making it more attractive. So at least they go through the post office once in a lifetime. Paul, you want to comment? Maybe so that the camera sees you as well, maybe you step forward if it's a reply as well. Okay, so just to respond to the question in terms of the number of postal operators that have mobile apps, the UPU does regular research on the capability of digital services. So our latest research indicates that 45% of postal companies around the world have a mobile app. And those mobile apps vary in functionality from just simple track and trace all the way through to super apps and mega apps. Some of you may be familiar with this concept of a super or mega app where now you combine a range of services, financial services, logistic services, government identity services, parcel delivery services. For example, in Egypt they have a wonderful super app and I'd encourage everybody to look at the developments in super apps where the whole range of postal services and related services are available on a mobile app. Sorry. No, thank you, Paul. The microphone, I can take only one more question. Sorry, I see several hands up. Okay, two more questions, but they need to be short, okay? No long questions. One here in the front, please. The microphone we need it here in the front. But having good questions is... Oh, it's here in the back. It's right in the back. I hope it's okay. Okay, it is okay. So we won't have lunch today, but please answer the question. I'll try to keep it short. Michael Dorn is my name from various systems and various card in Vienna, Austria. We're a security printer, ID cards, stamps, and specifically crypto stamps. And I have a question. So we've manufactured these crypto stamps in the past for some of the countries that have been mentioned already today. And the panel in the front has mentioned that technology can be used for so many different things, like track and trace, financial services. And if these terms is just one visible solution, right? But the thing is that we've always been using different chains, different blockchains, different smart contracts, all of these things. And we've been asked from all the countries, like which one to use and so on and so on. And I think there would be a need to standardize blockchain technology for the postal services, like whatever service that may be. And my question is, what would it take or what is necessary or can the UPU do this to actually set up a standard for all of these things just for the postal services? Okay, and wants to answer to this question? Maybe, wait, wait, here is Walter. We're talking about standardization, maybe. And then Salah, and then we go to the other questions. But Walter, maybe you stand up so that also the camera can see you. Sorry, yes, you can hear me. The answer is very simple and very straightforward. Not only on the global field of the UPU, this is possible. Standardization, of course. Please welcome into the consultative committee. Because then you can sit there and help to standardize. And also, Liaison, of course, with the Europeans, there is the next mandate coming. And I'm also the chairman of the digital postal services there. Standardization of blockchain and crypto stamps is high of our agenda. So, yes, the UPU, welcome here, is the perfect forum for that. Thank you. Salah, you wanted to say something as well? Walter is saying, of course, setting standards in the postal sector is one of the core normative work of the UPU. However, what we try to do is we try to be platform agnostic. And the bulk of our work is ensuring interoperability between systems. So, at the UPU, when we set standards, it is really to set a global framework that can be utilized by non-monopolistic operators. And that is what we will be looking at at a platform level on our side. And if you look at some of the standards that we've set for addressing, for all of the other work that is happening, electronic data interchange, it's meant to be done in a way that benefits all levels of operators around the world and all technology providers. And we ensure that we do not dictate one chain over the other as a UN body and as a normative body. We do not go down a path where we say, okay, this is it. We instead set standard that is interoperable for all. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Maybe we can jump to the last two questions, the ones that I promised that we'll take, but we do quickly. One here and one there, please. Whoever wants to start. Okay, the mic goes there. Yeah, awesome. Thank you. I'll keep it brief, mindful of time. My question partly is already asked. Blockchain, the application, by the way, I'm Suhail Chaudhary from Saudi Post Logistics, just by way of introduction. The blockchain, we talked about crypto, we talked about cryptocurrency and stamps. From a supply chain point of view, where this technology has been tried or is most useful is from a trust and avoiding contrafeit in supply chain. In my past role with the New Zealand Post, we have tried that technology successfully but I think the cost is quite prohibitive in terms of building decentralized systems. But where I wanted to comment on from a UPU point of view, yes, we talk about standardization. The products which underpin global supply chain, they are largely built around the concept of UPU and the products are not flexible. So I'll leave it there and we can talk later on. If we talk about digital innovation and encrypting each part of supply chain in a way where the ledger or whatever the pockets of data can operate and trust can be built, then the innovation in our core product sets which underpin UPU needs to be enhanced. And that is little bit beyond the consultative committee's role. Thank you. Thank you very much. So may we go over here for the last question. Thank you, Mark. Nabilia Beliri from Albain and Post, Director of Financial Services. I have this question from Mr. Khan. In US, we have seen advanced model of payment and transfers, national and international, like PayPal, ZEL, Venmo, Kesha, many of them. And they have somehow diminished the role of financial postal services and they still keep growing. Is postal operator market in Europe and other countries threatened by US trends or by these global payment platforms? Well, I mean, you need to consider what your core businesses in terms of financial services. I do not think that the core financial services of a post is to provide mortgages or agricultural lending, just to give you an example. Now, if you consider that the post plays a role in bringing inclusive financial services as a society, our last survey is showing that over two billion postal accounts exist in the world. That's a 40% increase from what we saw last time. So it is super interesting for us to see that these accounts are actually growing. And if you look at the size of these accounts, they're really small. And that tells you who your core customers are. Now, cross-border remittances is always a tricky issue given national policies and national regulations. But when you look at domestic remittances, the post plays a huge role in enabling that. It's super cheap. It's super accessible. As you mentioned yourself, the post is everywhere. The granularity, the capillarity of the post in remote rural areas cannot be matched by a commercial bank. And that is a postal business. Should you be going into digital financial services? Yes. Would you become the next PayPal? Probably not. You need to understand your missions, your market, and where you want to go, right? Do you want to become the next Visa or Mastercard? Probably not. Do you want to partner with them to provide the services that your customers demand? Yes. So are these apps and financial platforms a threat to the post? I would argue the potential partners. You ought not to go into commercial spaces, in my opinion, where you would have to spend billions of dollars in R&D when you can partner with them, which is exactly the point of this panel. And leapfrog, all of that R&D, all of that investment, all of the technological innovation that comes through, and you use it to your benefit. Thank you. OK, thank you very much. We have to close the session, I think, for obvious reasons. Thank you very much, really, for the great participation from the audience through the web chat. And also here in the room, I think that's really good that we have this discussion. I mean, we all agree that really digital transformation, new technologies, and all these things, we have to go forward, forward, forward, and it doesn't stop. But it's complex. And I think what we have also seen is, yes, they're not only the security aspects to it, there's also the security in knowing what we are doing and that everything in the environment is safe and predictable for users. So standardization and questions like these are extremely important. So thank you very much for the panelists for discussing this with us. Thank you. And now the bad news is, since we ran a bit over time and came back from the coffee break late as well, please stay in the room. We make a break just for five minutes so that the new panelists can get mic'd and the host can give back their microphones and we start right away with the next session. Thank you very much. And because we are a game-changing panelist, I believe that during the lunch it would be great to see your opinions, not only on blockchain, but everything dealing with the post. Absolutely, right. Perfect.


The study aimed to compare the productivity trends and scholarly impact of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 literature across three consecutive calendar years using six high-impact medical journals. The results showed a significant increase in if change for manuscripts including COVID-19, with highly cited publications being more likely in these manuscripts. However, the study also highlighted that inflated IFs create ambiguity as benchmark tools for assessing scholarly impact and may incentivize authors to exploit the publication process. This article was authored by Arestes de Lardes and Panayotis Giannos.


Catch up and get ahead with the edge for the week of July 27th. Do your part to conserve water this summer. Start right in the garden with an oya. San Antonio ceramic artist Diana Kersi explains this ancient irrigation technique on a YouTube video that has been watched nearly 8,000 times around the world. You can buy a lovely ceramic oya or follow Diana's easy instructions and make your way. And what happens is the plant roots start to grow up against the oya and they pull the moisture out of the oya and they only use the water that they need. How do you think the city should spend its money? San Antonio asked and 2,000 of you answered. San Antonio's number one funding priority is to protect children and adults by spending more on safer sidewalks and streets. More than a quarter of the people who suggested cuts said they support the city's position in negotiations with the police and fire unions and want to see the uniformed employees' benefits cut. Read more online and see what people are saying about the 2016 budget. Unless we start planning now, getting around could be impossible in 2040 after San Antonio grows by one million more people. Do you have an idea? SHMRO wants to hear from you at a community meeting or online. Here's one person's idea. Add a cool serene commuter option on the San Antonio River and call it Viario. Now it's your turn. Speak up. In case you haven't noticed, it's hot out there, which means pet owners should take care not to leave their dogs in their vehicles or hot truck beds. Dogs don't sweat, so they can't control their body temperature as well as we do. They cool themselves through panting and through the soles of their paws. That's why dogs can suffer from heat stroke in a hot car in under 10 minutes. Go online to learn more about keeping your pets safe in the summer heat. Go to Nowcast SA, where you can learn more about ancient irrigation techniques. Find out how to share your ideas on transportation. Learn more about how to keep pets safe in the hot summertime. Read more and find out what people are saying about the 2016 San Antonio City Budget. Thanks for watching The Edge.