The technology has become popular with banking and financial institutions in the last year.

Identity services

Addressing The Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Melbourne on Wednesday, Mr Fahour said identity services was one of the single largest opportunities of e-commerce for the company with more than 90 per cent of Australian passports handled by Australia Post.

"We do most of the physical IDs, so it's logical that a trusted organisation like Australia Post be able to not only handle the physical ID but digital ID."

Australian Securities Exchange chief executive Elmer Funke Kupper said that using blockchain could take $5 billion out of the cost of buying shares.

He said that as the technology matured in the next five years Sydney could stand alongside New York and London as a blockchain capital of the world.

"What it allows you to do is to collapse whole business value chains," he said.

"When you think about the equity market today, it's a very sequential process. It's a complex sequential process for what is a very simple transaction. These processes are 20-plus years old. We realise if we can bring everyone along on this journey of blockchain that $4 billion to $5 billion could become a smaller number. But we could unleash innovation, competition and better services across the value chain."


Mr Funke Kupper said a company should be able to issue a dividend and have it in investors accounts by the next day.

"If you're an investor relations director you shouldn't have to look for your register, you should be able to see your register at any point in time. So at the end of the trading day if there's been an unusual amount of trading in shares. Regualtors should be able to see trading in real time and play back trading if they need to. That's extraordinarily difficult today."

But it's not just identity services Australia Post is looking at innovating, the company is experimenting using drones to deliver parcels.

Parcels under threat

Mr Fahour said the parcel business was under threat by "Uber-like" companies.

In February, Australia Post acquired a 70 per cent share in courier company Mailplus.

Mr Fahour said the logic behind the acquisition was that he believed the worst thing a company could do was wave goodbye to the entrepreneurial talent in start-ups when they' were acquired.

"It's an innovation economy that we're in right now ... the last thing you want to do is buy a business and watch the entrepreneur walk out the door," Mr Fahour said.

"That's the methodology that I think corporations have to have a lot more brought into their business, without loving it to death. As much as we're backing technology, we're actually backing talent – the leaders, the entrepreneurs. You've got to work with your customers and particularly these entrepreneurs and give them the chance to create a big business and disrupt the core."