Exchange Zones
What is an Exchange Zone?
An Exchange Zone is a secure, modular access point deployed in an everyday place. It holds one or more towers, each divided into compartments, and a person opens one compartment at a time from an EZ App. It lets people drop off, pick up, store, and hand off items on their own time, without coordinating schedules or staff.
Modular by design: the hardware is built to be configured for the block it sits on, and to change as that block does.
Arriving November 1, 2026
Modular down to the single compartment.
Today a location picks a configuration. From November 1 it picks compartments: the sizes and the count a block actually uses, adjusted later from Relai Access without replacing the tower that is already there.
The hardware
Built to sit outside, and to be useful the day it lands.
New to the terms? See what tower and compartment mean.
Configured for the location
A tower is a set of compartments, and the mix is chosen per site. A cafe with a small footprint and a campus mail room do not need the same thing, so they do not get the same thing.
Chosen one compartment at a time
A location can begin with a two-compartment footprint and add more later. Growing does not mean replacing what is already there.
Battery powered
No hardwiring and no trenching. Exchange Zones run on internal power, so placement is decided by where people actually walk.
Opened by an app
Every compartment is opened through an EZ App, and Relai authorizes each open. Access is tracked without handing out keys or codes.
FAQs
Simple answers before you open a door.
Relai is built to feel familiar: choose an app, find a place, open a compartment, and complete the handoff.
No. A safe exchange zone is a marked parking space, usually outside a police station, open during the hours the station keeps, where two people meet in person. An Exchange Zone is infrastructure. One person opens a compartment and leaves, another opens it later, so the two never have to be in the same place at the same time.
Anything that fits a compartment. They come in small, medium, and large, which covers most of what people hand to each other: phones, clothing, tools, documents, keys, groceries, sports gear. Furniture and vehicles do not fit, and no amount of design makes them.
Anyone with the EZ App for that location. Relai publishes apps for its own markets, such as EZ PGH in Pittsburgh and EZ ATL in Atlanta, and Relai 3 partners publish their own for their communities.