This is a big day. Secure, unattended deliveries are finally here.

Earlier this week, Latch completed the world’s first unattended deliveries using smart access.

Beginning Monday morning, thousands of people in New York City are able to order anything they want from our partners online and know that they can return home to their packages without the threat of theft, inclement weather, or the dreaded “sorry we missed you” door tag. This new experience is explosive, with thousands of new customers in New York City alone getting this experience at their building every week now.

This is no longer a concept. This is no longer a test. This is the beginning of what will soon become the new normal in urban environments and beyond. For the first time ever, customers ordered a product online, a delivery person shows up at their building, uses their unique credential to open the door to the building lobby, and sets the package inside.

While it may seem like a straightforward idea, executing on this user experience has been surprisingly complex. It has taken us just over four years to perfect and actualize this experience for customers, building owners, and partners, including countless hours of product research, hundreds of people, and millions of dollars in development to make this moment possible. Since 2013, we’ve been planning for a world where someone orders a product online and has that product securely delivered to their space,and we’ve been granted significant IP around our inventions and developments in this industry. Enabling deliveries isn’t something we realized would matter after the fact, we built for what we’ve dubbed the “last meter” since the very beginning.

Not only have we designed the world’s first complete access system for urban dwellings, but we’ve also done it in a way that feels natural and intuitive, not riddled with gimmicky technology that only frustrates everyone involved. Our system is designed so that anyone can use it without special training, making Latch adoption by residents, building owners, and new service partners quick and easy.The simplicity of this product experience and the depth of our partnerships with leading companies in both ecommerce and logistics mean that we can quickly activate new capabilities and new experiences for everyone in our ecosystem at a national scale.

This is just the beginning, and we believe these new delivery capabilities will create a fundamental shift in consumer shopping behavior, where people increasingly order more and more products to their urban building (and suburban home) without ever going to a store.

While leading companies are spending billions of dollars to build warehouse robotics, autonomous vehicles, and last mile couriers, access has remained unchanged. Today, Latch is introducing a fundamentally new capability into the ecosystem that will enable any merchant or carrier to provide a breakthrough experience to their customers. We’re pretty thrilled about what the future is going to look like and how we’re going to get to create totally new things for the customers, building managers, and partners we serve.

If you want to get Latch at your building in New York City, we’d love to help make that happen. Please email us at request@latch.com.