Use of payment cards at post offices to be extended.

The company also plans to launch a mobile app in 2019.Slovakia's national post office company, Slovenskaacute Poscaronta, will soon introduce the possibility to pay with bank cards at its post offices. So far, clients have needed cash to pay their cheques or collect goods they buy online via cash-on-delivery model.

The biggest offices will adopt this scheme by the end of 2018, the Sme daily reported."Our aim is to test this in as many post offices as possible, ideally in every Slovenskaacute Poscaronta branch and for every type of service," said Peter Helexa, managing director of Slovenskaacute Poscaronta, as quoted by Sme.

The pilot scheme will be in operation until the end of this year. During this period, the use of the payment cards should be enabled at the biggest post offices.

Subsequently, the system is expected to be installed in all other post offices.It is not currently clear how much the new system will cost.

"Since we are currently focusing on intense negotiation over conditions with the companies issuing payment cards, it would be premature to comment on the costs," the company's spokesperson, Martina Mackovaacute told Sme.Current restraintsAlthough it is already possible to pay with bank cards at post offices, the service is very limited.

Since the autumn of 2016, there have only been two services for which clients can pay with cards: the postal payment on account and the postal economic payment, the latter used by companies.Moreover, while it is possible to use a bank card to pay for school lunches, people cannot settle their invoices within SIPO (Joint Collection of Utility Payments - a service for making the household payments when a payer can pay the charges for water, gas, electric energy, rent, cable TV or even for loan repayments only by means of one document) by a bank card.

In addition, the services are limited to Poscarontovaacute Banka card holders and their use incurs an extra fee for transactions. Not even the so-called postal cash dispensers, i.

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