(Bloomberg) -- Your packages are here, and you're not. It's all right -- they'll just let themselves in.
United Parcel Service Inc., of Atlanta, has begun a pilot program with the smart-access provider Latch to give UPS drivers keyless entry to building lobbies and package rooms in parts of New York City.
The program, starting in Manhattan and Brooklyn, will help drivers complete more deliveries on the first attempt. For every building to which they are making a delivery, they get a unique credential on a handheld device, UPS said Tuesday. Latch monitors each entry digitally to create a record of the user and time of access. Drivers won't be given access to individual apartments.
“It can be difficult to securely deliver packages in high-density, multifamily urban residences, especially when people are not at home,” Jerome Roberts, UPS's vice president of global product innovation, said in a statement. He called smart access “a big step forward for the package delivery business.”
Latch, founded by veterans of Apple Inc. and based in New York, has raised more than $26 million in private funding, according to the statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Oshrat Carmiel in New York at ocarmiel1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at dtaub@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey, Bret Okeson
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