Belgian bpost is reaching out to small and medium business (SMB) customers by offering them business accounts to help reduce parcel delivery costs.

As with other major postal delivery operators around the world, bpost has long given preferential deals to large companies. Now, the postal operator has created a new service that allows SMBs that ship fewer than 1,000 parcels a year to have business accounts.

Initially the SMB customer will set up a free SMB business account with bpost and then send parcels at the market rate. The postal operator offers a loyalty scheme type offer where the customer will get ‘shipping credit’ for every parcel they send, accumulating more shipping credit for every parcel sent. This is then applied as a discount on parcels sent the following year.

Another part of the offer is a real-time shipment dashboard that gives a clear overview of all shipments.

No advance payment is made and bpost bills the customer for their accumulated parcel delivery costs every two weeks. Only the shipping labels that are used are paid for too.

This scheme is ideal with smaller businesses with plans to grow their online shopping presence. Those who do grow their business will be rewarded with lower shipping costs, a big factor in the bottom line of e-commerce delivery.