After months of uncertainty about the future of their relationship going forward, Amazon and the United States Postal Service (USPS) have finally reached a deal to preserve their partnership. The deal sees Amazon retain around 80% of its deliveries with USPS, which equates to over 1 billion packages per year.
Amazon Officially Reaches a Deal with USPS
Recently, it was announced that Amazon and USPS have reached an agreement to continue their working relationship, which has now been going on for more than 30 years. Specifically, the deal will see Amazon retain around 80% of its existing deliveries with USPS, which is around 1 billion packages per year.
Sure, this is a 20% cut, but it’s better than USPS completely losing Amazon, which is its largest single customer.
In response to the deal, a spokesperson from Amazon said: “We’re pleased to have reached a new agreement with USPS that furthers our longstanding partnership and will let us continue supporting our customers and communities together”.
Tensions Were High Between the Pair of Companies
While the deal is done now, there was plenty of uncertainty and doubt about whether a deal would ever be made. The eventual agreement followed months of negotiations, though these talks ran into problems in December 2025.
These stalled talks were likely the result of USPS announcing that the agency was planning to hold an auction to sell some of its shipping capacity to the highest bidder. This would force Amazon to compete with other companies to secure capacity from USPS, which may have been expensive.
This also introduced plenty of uncertainty for Amazon, and likely strained the relationship between the ecommerce giant and USPS. It even led to Amazon thinking about cutting ties with the agency and considering other alternatives, including exploring the idea of replacing USPS with the company’s own national delivery service.
Following this, it was also reported that Amazon was planning to reduce the company’s postal volume with USPS by two-thirds by the fall, which is when the previous agreement was set to expire. This would have been disastrous for USPS, which has been struggling financially as of late.
But in the time since the stalled talks and the planned postal volume reduction, it appears that Amazon and USPS have made amends, as the pair was finally able to arrive at a deal.
Future Outlook of the Deal
However, despite the deal being made, it’s important to remember it’s still scaled back compared to the previous arrangement between Amazon and USPS. While a 20% reduction may seem small on paper, in reality, that equates to millions of packages each year.
Also, it remains to be seen how long the partnership lasts, and how USPS plans on growing revenue after taking a 20% hit on its Amazon business.
While the agreement could end up lasting a very long time, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Amazon continue to reduce the volume of packages it delivers through USPS. Eventually, I could see the company exiting the partnership entirely to focus on delivering packages through its own delivery service.
