Editing Envelope (section)

===Present and future state of envelopes===
In 1998, the [[U.S. Postal Service]] became the first postal authority to approve a system of printing digital stamps.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}} With this innovative alternative to an adhesive-backed [[postage stamp]], businesses could more easily produce envelopes in-house, address them, and customize them with advertising information on the face.
[[File:Mail_Sample_(back_to_back).jpg|thumb|Mail envelope certified by [[Philippine Postal Corporation|PHLPost]]]]
The fortunes of the commercial envelope manufacturing industry and the postal service go hand in hand, and both link to the printing industry and the mechanized envelope processing industry producing equipment such as franking and addressing machines. Technological developments affecting one ricochet through the others: addressing machines print addresses, postage stamps are a print product, franking machines imprint a frank on an envelope. If fewer envelopes are required; fewer stamps are required; fewer franking machines are required and fewer addressing machines are required.{{Citation needed|date=June 2008}} For example, the advent of information-based indicia (IBI) (commonly referred to as digitally-encoded electronic stamps or digital indicia) by the US Postal Service in 1998 caused widespread consternation in the franking machine industry, as their machines were rendered obsolete, and resulted in a flurry of lawsuits involving Pitney Bowes among others. The advent of [[e-mail]] in the late 1990s appeared to offer a substantial threat to the postal service. By 2008 letter-post service operators were reporting significantly smaller volumes of letter-post, specifically stamped envelopes, which they attributed mainly to e-mail. Although a corresponding reduction in the volume of envelopes required would have been expected, no such decrease was reported as widely as the reduction in letter-post volumes.