Method for providing postal items with postal prepayment impressions

A method for providing mailpieces with postage indicia, comprising providing a customer system which interacts with a customer to regulate a loading and a storing of account amounts of the customer;

• generating and storing by a security module of the customer system a random number;
• combining and encrypting by the security module the random number and an identification number of the security module
• transmitting by the security module the encrypted random number and identification number of the security module to a value transfer center;
• decrypting by the value transfer center the encrypted random number and the identification number of the security module;
• assigning by the value transfer center the identification number of the security module to the customer in a postage application database;
• forming by the value transfer center a loading procedure identification number that contains the identification number of the security module and an actual account amount of the customer;
• encrypting by the value transfer center the decrypted random number together with the loading procedure identification number
• transmitting by the value transfer center the encrypted random number and the encrypted loading procedure identification number to the customer system;
• forming by the security module, a hash value of a portion of the mailing data, the random number and the loading procedure identification number;
• creating by the customer system a postage indicium using the portion of the mailing data, the encrypted random number, encrypted loading procedure identification number and the hash value;
• and
• printing by the customer system postage indicium which is applied to the mailpieces.