A citizen scans the QR code on a mailbox in Shanghai on November 27, 2014. [Photo: CFP]

Starting from Thursday, people in Shanghai can send intra-city deliveries by dropping the envelope into a postbox in the city, Shanghai-based newspaper website wenhui.news365.com.cn reports.

Altogether 2805 mailboxes in the city have QR codes. Citizens simply seal the delivery in a special intra-city delivery envelope, find any of these "upgraded" postboxes, and scan the QR code by using WeChat on their smartphones.

Then the user can follow the WeChat public account of Shanghai Post Delivery to get the information of the mailbox, scan the QR code on the envelope to get its serial number, and send the answer "1" to the WeChat public account.

After receiving a system verification message to confirm the 7-yuan expense of the delivery, the user can drop the envelope in the postbox.

The whole process takes only about one and a half minutes.

The envelope will be delivered to its destination the next day if the process finishes before the open time of the postbox that day.

After the delivery transfer center receives the envelope, the user will receive a short message sent to his or her mobile phone, which is the official confirmation of this service.

This new service aims to "activate" these mailboxes and improve their utilization ratio, since fewer and fewer people send letters nowadays.