UPS is aggressively working to attract smaller online merchants through its UPS Digital Access Program, and on Wednesday, it announced a collaboration with Square, an online payments and store-hosting service.
The new solution provides Square’s ecommerce customers with UPS shipping connectivity, according to a UPS spokesperson. “This collaboration is one of the increasing number of strategic alliances and agreements UPS has added to make industry-leading logistics services more broadly available, as part of its newly unveiled strategy called the UPS Digital Access Program (DAP),” she said.
Thanks to the new solution, small- and medium-sized businesses can easily use the same shipping services offered by the industry’s largest players, she added – and Square’s customers can receive attractive discounts of up to 55 percent off UPS’s daily rates, including various waived surcharges.
The UPS Digital Access Program launched in October, and last week, UPS announced plug-ins to make its tools and services available within ecommerce platforms WooCommerce, PrestaShop, OpenCart, and Magento.
UPS also announced an expansion of its Access Points Network – about 1,500 Package Express Centers locations will join the UPS Access Point network in 2020, bringing the total number of package-pickup locations to nearly 22,000 in the US and nearly 41,000 globally. The expanded network will now serve 92% of the US population, the UPS spokesperson told EcommerceBytes.
UPS is also expanding Saturday and Sunday operations and expects to double weekend delivery volumes in 2020.
“Weekend network enhancements will expand residential and commercial Saturday volumes by reaching an additional 40 million U.S. consumers. UPS is the only integrated carrier offering Saturday package car pickup of all service levels and Saturday commercial delivery. The company also stated that Sunday residential deliveries and commercial pickups will be available to customers on a contract basis.”
See all of the news UPS released on Wednesday on the UPS Press Room page.
