USPS-licensed data.
Audited at every step.

NCOALink, DPV, DSF2, LACSLink, CASS, and the mail.dat specification are USPS-owned. The processing runs on BCC Software's USPS-certified infrastructure — DirectMail.io is a certified reseller of BCC's API platform (BCC Architect REACH). BCC has been a USPS Full-Service NCOALink licensee since the program began and holds corresponding USPS certifications across the rest of the address-quality stack. Every record processed in DirectMail.io clears the same USPS-audited pipeline a Fortune-100 enterprise mailer would use directly.

USPS-licensed data products can only be processed by USPS-certified licensees. A vendor that claims to do NCOA without a licensed processor in the chain is either misrepresenting the service or running it through a shadow workflow that won't survive a USPS audit. Naming the upstream licensee — BCC Software — answers the procurement question definitively: the data flows from USPS to a certified licensee to us, and the certification chain is documented at every step.

DirectMail.io is a USPS-recognized customer of a USPS-licensed processor (BCC Software). For NCOALink Full-Service, DPV, DSF2, LACSLink, and CASS, USPS licenses the processing infrastructure, not the downstream platform — meaning every mail platform serving commercial mailers either holds the license directly (a small number of enterprise providers) or runs through a licensed processor (the majority of the market). The license model is the same one used by every major direct-mail platform; the relevant question for buyers is which licensed processor is actually in the chain, and the answer for us is BCC Software.

USPS refreshes NCOALink monthly (the 48-month moving window of permanent change-of-address filings), DPV monthly, DSF2 monthly, LACSLink quarterly with continuous incremental updates, and the CASS reference data monthly. Every drop in DirectMail.io runs against the current month's data, not against a cached snapshot — the API calls hit BCC's current-month-loaded infrastructure each time, so a list processed on the 15th uses the same source data USPS uses on the 15th.

Typical processing returns inside seconds for sub-100K record submissions and inside minutes for larger lists. BCC's infrastructure runs at enterprise-grade availability with redundancy across data centers. In the event of an upstream outage, DirectMail.io queues submissions and retries automatically — drops do not lose certification status; they wait for processing capacity to return. Production drops on hard timelines have rerun-from-cache options for non-NCOA hygiene steps so press windows aren't missed; NCOA itself, by USPS license terms, must hit the live processor and cannot be cached.

No. USPS license terms prohibit redistribution or persistent storage of the NCOALink source data outside the certified processor's infrastructure. We submit each list to BCC's processor, receive the certified output (the updated addresses, the disposition codes, the certification documentation), and store only the certified output and the audit trail. The underlying NCOALink registry, the DPV reference data, and the DSF2 file all remain inside BCC's licensed environment. This is also why "powered by" the USPS data products is the right framing — we operate on the certified outputs, not on the raw source files.

For address-quality and postal sortation, BCC and USPS are the load-bearing sources. For identity-graph services (address append, email append, identity resolution), the platform uses a separate stack of identity providers under direct contract. For postage payment, the relationship is direct between the mailer's account at USPS and PostalOne! — DirectMail.io facilitates the eDoc submission but does not intermediate the postage funds. The data-sources picture for the rest of the platform is documented in the security and subprocessor disclosure shared during procurement review.