Making a Mark

Less than a week after Westlake Village-based StampMaster won approval from the U.S. Postal Service to test a system for selling postage over the Internet, rival E-Stamp says it will unveil a new version of its electronic stamp product.

The Palo Alto company is expected to announce a new way to access its E-Stamp Internet Postage service directly through an Internet browser. E-Stamp’s original product, released for beta testing in March, requires users to download postage credits to a special piece of hardware that connects to a printer. The electronic vault prints a “SmartStamp” directly onto an envelope, and when the vault is empty, customers can use their credit cards to order more postage.

At the time, then-Postmaster Gen. Marvin Runyon said E-Stamp’s Internet Postage system was the first innovation in postage since the postage meter was introduced in 1920. But several UCLA business students thought it would be even better to download postage directly from the Internet to an envelope, and the result was StampMaster.

Customers who use StampMaster Internet Postage must set up a StampMaster account and download free software, but there is no need to buy additional hardware. Both companies charge a fee for the convenience of downloading stamps from the Internet.

When StampMaster unveiled its system last week, E-Stamp Chief Executive Sunir Kapoor said the drawback of StampMaster’s system is that users have to log onto the Internet every time they need postage. But with a new browser-based version of his own, Kapoor is ready to change his tune.

“From the beginning, our mission has been to make online postage available everywhere,” he said.