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App that sends postcards from your phone: New Royal Mail programme will allow you to choose a holiday snap and write a message before turning it into a physical card

Royal Mail app enables tourists to send their holiday snaps back home
They are sent as postcards without the hassle using 'Swapshots' service
Personal messages can be sent on back of photos to family and friends

Published: 00:04 GMT, 24 May 2016 | Updated: 00:39 GMT, 24 May 2016

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Buying postcards, finding stamps and tracking down a post box while abroad is a chore for many holidaymakers.

But a new app, launched by the Royal Mail, enables tourists to send their holiday snaps home as postcards without all the bother.

Using a service called Swapshots customers can turn their mobile phone photographs into cards and type a personal message on the back to send to family and friends.

The app, which is free to download, charges 84p to send a card, and lets users apply filters to their pictures, just like photo-editing app Instagram, and add silly extras like a comedy moustache or hat.

Using a service called Swapshots customers can turn their mobile phone photographs into cards and type a personal message on the back to send to family and friends

The new venture is a bid from the Royal Mail to modernise its business, which is struggling amid falling letter numbers and competition in the parcels market from rivals like Amazon and delivery firm DPD.

The Royal Mail is pouncing on the recent trend for customising greetings cards with pictures and personalised messages, which has led to the success of companies like Moonpig, Vistaprint and Funky Pigeon.

The personalised cards and gifts sector has taken off in recent years, with digital cameras in smartphones meaning people are taking more photographs, but the decline of old film cameras mean people are less likely to get hard copies of their pictures printed off.

This trend has led to businesses coming up with quirky ways of printing photographs, either on greetings cards or on personalised gifts like mugs and cushions.

Royal Mail’s move into apps follows the company’s disappointing results last week which showed profits fell to £267million in the year to the end of March, down from £400million on last year

Eight per cent of people in the UK said they were sending customised cards in March last year, according to data from Mintel.

Over that period the research company said sales of print on demand cards – which includes online customised cards and ones customers can print at home – rose by 10 per cent to £77million.

Moonpig’s sales went up 18 per cent to £51.7million in the year to April 2015. It was bought by online photo printing company Photobox for £120million in 2012.

Royal Mail’s move into apps follows the company’s disappointing results last week which showed profits fell to £267million in the year to the end of March, down from £400million on last year.

The firm is fighting stiff competition in the parcel market from rivals such as Amazon and DPD.

In 2015 it narrowly missed Ofcom targets to deliver 93 per cent of first class items by the next working day, only managing 92.5 per cent. The regulator is currently reviewing the target, known as the universal service obligation, and is expected to report its findings imminently.