CMRA - Commercial Mailing Receiving Agency

What is a CMRA?

A Commercial Mailing Receiving Agency (CMRA) is a private company—such as The UPS Store (formerly Mailboxes Etc.) or FedEx Kinkos—that provides mailbox rental services to individuals and companies.

How do I identify CMRA mailboxes?

Any address processed using Smarty is closely inspected. If it’s found to correspond to a CMRA, we flag it so that you can handle the address according to the needs of your business. See field definitions for details.

Why is this important?

Being able to properly identify CMRA-based customers has many advantages, including fraud prevention and arranging delivery. If you need to know where somebody lives, a CMRA box won't help you. If you know that you have the address of a CMRA mailbox, you can request the information you need and make other inferences.

More information is available on the official USPS site.