Latch, a Manhattan-based startup that builds app-based locking systems, has struck a deal with UPS that lets apartment dwellers who don't have a doorman receive deliveries when they're not home.

UPS drivers can now unlock Latch-enabled doors using a trackable, dedicated "credential" or code on their handheld device and leave packages in a lobby or some other secure area within the building. Drivers will not be opening apartment doors.

The partnership has so far resulted in a pilot program in Brooklyn and Manhattan that could expand to other cities. It follows a deal that Latch made a year ago with jet.com, a Walmart-owned e-commerce company, which provided the Latch keyless-lock service to more than 1,000 non-doorman buildings in New York.

The deal continues Latch's efforts to make its software-enabled system accessible to a range of services. A deal with UPS opens the door at least partway to deliveries from Amazon, which does about 20% of its shipping through the ground-based service, according to a recent Jefferies analysis.

"We don't want the customer to ever have to think about where they're shopping online or what carrier they're using. We just want deliveries to get in every time," Latch co-founder and CEO Luke Schoenfelder said in an interview. "Broadening the number of folks we work with on the carrier side allows us to offer nearly universal coverage to folks who live in Latch buildings."

He would not supply a figure for how many buildings the new program will give UPS access to, but he said it was more "by an order of magnitude" than the 1,000-plus buildings in the deal with jet.com. It is also not limited to non-doorman buildings. Latch products are so far only being sold to apartment houses with 25 or more units.

Schoenfelder said that enabling UPS drivers to make the delivery to a Latch-locked mail room area could help relieve doormen of some of the burden of managing packages.

Founded in 2014, Latch has raised $26 million in financing. Investors include real estate–connected players such as the LeFrak family and Corigin Ventures.