Parasitic postage indicia

A system comprising:

• a memory storing a database;
• one or more processors communicatively coupled to the memory and configured to:
• receive a request to generate postage indicium data providing proof of payment for postal services of a postal service provider from a mailer system;
• generate the postage indicium data and parasitic postage indicium data based on the request, wherein the postage indicium data comprises data sufficient to satisfy requirements of the postal service provider for proof of payment for a postal service identified in the request, wherein the parasitic postage indicium data comprises thin indicium information configured to be carried in one or more components of a mail scan block without alteration of a structure of the mail scan block, wherein the mail scan block comprises a scan block for which components of postal service provider infrastructure are configured to scan for a purpose other than for postage indicia processing, and wherein the thin indicium information includes information that provides substantially unique identification of the postage indicium data;
• store the postage indicium data in the database;
• and
• transmit the parasitic postage indicium data to the mailer system, wherein the mailer system prints the mail scan block having the parasitic postage indicium data embedded therein for a mail item, and wherein verification of proof of payment for the postal service associated with the mail item is based on the postage indicium data stored in the database, and wherein the postage indicium data is identified based on the substantially unique identifying information included in the thin indicium information extracted via a scan of the mail scan block.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

• receiving a request to generate postage indicium data providing proof of payment for postal services of a postal service provider from a mailer system;
• generating the postage indicium data and parasitic postage indicium data based on the request, wherein the postage indicium data comprises data sufficient to satisfy requirements of the postal service provider for proof of payment for a postal service identified in the request, wherein the parasitic postage indicium data comprises thin indicium information configured to be carried in one or more components of a mail scan block without alteration of a structure of the mail scan block, wherein the mail scan block comprises a scan block for which components of postal service provider infrastructure are configured to scan for a purpose other than for postage indicia processing, and wherein the thin indicium information includes information that provides substantially unique identification of the postage indicium data;
• storing the postage indicium data in a database;
• and
• transmitting the parasitic postage indicium data to the mailer system, wherein the mailer system prints the mail scan block having the parasitic postage indicium data embedded therein for a mail item, and wherein verification of proof of payment for the postal service associated with the mail item is based on the postage indicium data stored in the database, and wherein the postage indicium data is identified based on the substantially unique identifying information included in the thin indicium information extracted via a scan of the mail scan block.