Some basic concepts to understand when renting a private virtual mailbox address in the United States and how to simply identify the nature of the target address.
What is a PO Box?
PO Box, short for Post Office Box, is a small box rented by users from the post office, which can only be used to receive USPS mail. These small boxes are centrally managed by the post office for convenient delivery, and the incoming mail does not require personal receipt. The function is singular, and users simply come to pick up their mail regularly. A PO Box does not have a real physical street address, only a box number, such as the postal box address PO Box 6945, London, W1A 6US provided by the UK virtual mailbox UKPOSTBOX. Most businesses indicate that PO Boxes cannot be used for registration.
What are Commercial and Residential addresses?
A "Commercial address," as the name suggests, is a place used for business operations. Broadly, commercial addresses include office buildings, factories, shopping malls, hospitals, churches, etc.
In contrast, a "Residential address" is a place used for personal non-business residence. Commercial addresses are mostly concentrated in urban areas, while residential addresses can be more dispersed or even remote. In some logistics delivery scenarios, delivering to a residential address may incur additional fees due to transportation costs.
What is CMRA?
CMRA stands for Commercial Mail Receiving Agency, which is a business entity that receives mail on behalf of users for profit, such as Private Mail Box (PMB) virtual private mailboxes like AnytimeMailbox. Private enterprises have autonomy and can receive not only postal mail but also packages and even provide virtual office services. Users renting a CMRA address are generally located out of state or in other countries. To prevent users from using their address for illegal activities and to authorize CMRA to receive mail that must be personally signed for, users need to provide a notarized Form 1583 for identity verification and authorization. The benefits of using a CMRA are numerous, such as protecting one's real address from being disclosed, receiving and forwarding international mail, and freelancers being able to read electronic scanned documents provided by CMRA online while on the go. Because it is a real physical address, some CMRA agencies can also be used for company registration.
Additionally, according to relevant regulations, such virtual addresses must include the "#" symbol to distinguish them from regular addresses. Therefore, when we occasionally see the "#" symbol in the registered addresses of certain American companies or addresses provided by cross-border e-commerce buyers, it can generally be determined that they are rented virtual addresses or addresses of forwarding companies.
If a user purchases a product from Amazon and orders it to an address service provider A, which then forwards it to address service provider B instead of their real address, address service provider A may consider this a fraudulent act and refuse to forward it.
The relationship between commercial addresses and CMRA
A "Commercial address" is a geographical concept, while "CMRA" is a business entity concept. As a company, the CMRA is theoretically located in commercial addresses such as office buildings and warehouses, but not all businesses operating in commercial addresses are CMRA agencies.
Identifying the nature of an address is important
In cross-border e-commerce, financial services, and overseas purchasing, many situations require entering an address. Some platforms have strict controls regarding addresses, either not supporting PO Boxes, rejecting entered commercial addresses, or only supporting residential private addresses. Therefore, accurately querying the nature of an address is crucial. How do these platforms determine whether an address is valid? Of course, they may not necessarily have a large database of addresses; similar to identifying residential IP addresses or querying bank card BINs, they rely on third-party professional data companies. The United States Postal Service (USPS) has a wealth of address data, and other third parties, such as "Smartystreets," provide paid address big data services to business users. Companies like Microsoft, Netflix, and Chase are their clients. If the address risk control system of the business platform we are working with happens to access Smartystreets' address data, it would be very helpful to check our address situation on the Smartystreets website before starting the business. Individual users have a limited number of free queries and functionality restrictions; in addition to U.S. addresses, they can also query addresses from other countries. The single address query page is: https://smartystreets.com/products/single-address.
Some business platforms have extremely strict address requirements and may manually verify the details of the registered address on Google Maps Street View, which is another matter.
Several tests for querying address nature
After opening the above page, enter the U.S. address you need to query.
Query Test One
First, take the USAbox virtual mailbox address 8345 NW 66 ST, MIAMI, FL 33166 as an example. There is a "Show more details" button on the right side of "View Results" to see detailed information.
Two points to note: On the left, the [RDI] is the Residential Delivery Indicator, showing "Residential" for residential addresses and "Commercial" for commercial addresses. The middle [CMRA] indicator shows whether the address belongs to a commercial mail receiving agency, displaying "Y" or "N." USAbox is a legitimate virtual mailbox provider, so it shows as Commercial and CMRA.
Query Test Two
Query an Anytime Mailbox address located in Arcadia, 116 E Live Oak Ave Arcadia, CA 91006.
[RDI] shows as Commercial, and [CMRA] shows as Y.
Query Test Three
Next, query an Anytime Mailbox address located in Commerce, 2154 S Atlantic Blvd Commerce, CA 90040.
[RDI] shows as Commercial, and [CMRA] shows as N.
Why are some Anytime Mailbox addresses recognized as CMRA while others are not? This is related to its business model. There is a "Become a Partner" button at the top of its homepage, allowing anyone who meets the criteria to apply to join their address service to earn income, which is a franchise model. Not all of these numerous franchisees will be accurately marked as CMRA, while USAbox virtual mailboxes have only one self-operated address.
Query Test Four
Now, let's query an Anytime MailBox virtual mailbox address, 1 E Center St Fayetteville AR, 72701.
This address is marked as a Residential address and non-CMRA. Such addresses are usually more useful for business than commercial addresses.
Query Test Five
I also queried the address information of Shipito and several other U.S. forwarding companies, and all showed [CMRA] as N. Forwarding companies primarily provide logistics, warehousing, and transportation services. Although some can also receive postal mail, they are fundamentally different from CMRA commercial mail receiving agencies and private virtual mailboxes.
Here, I only introduce how to accurately query the nature of an address. As for what business to use it for, just choose the address service provider according to the platform's requirements.