Australia Post's new Digital MailBox service will give users three payments options - its own Post billpay system, BPay or a credit card payment.Yesterday, Australia Post briefed media on the progress of the service, which was launched last October and then went quiet. The current status is that it is in "public beta", which means that it is still in an early stage of development but it has moved from being an in-house trial to a system that anyone can join.Digital MailBox has been designed to be a secure communications platform where people can receive electronic mail from banks, government agencies, telecommunications companies and utilities.Consumers, who do not have to pay a fee for the service, will be able to pay their bills through Digital MailBox and use it as a repository for documents, correspondence and bills.Australia Post says it is developing data management and storage tools that will be added to the service.Australia Post, Yarra Valley Water and AMP are live providers. Others that have signed up to provide the service but are not yet online include ANZ, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, National Australia Bank, Westpac, Link Market Services and Telstra.Australia Post's general manager, Post Digital, Catriona Larritt, said the company's pitch to consumers is that Digital MailBox will help them overcome the complexities of digital communications. Larritt said: "It can be inconvenient having to go to a number of sites, use different interfaces and remember a number of passwords. Digital MailBox is providing an aggregation service".For business customers, Larritt said that Australia Post can help get more of their customers to communicate electronically.She said: "What our research tells us is that large organisations get about 30 per cent of their customers… to agree to receive electronic mail. Beyond that it gets hard, and the cost of persuading people goes up."