It doesn't need to be that equivalent though. Some changes can be / are beneficial.
The last time I had to send a fax was when my back account had fraudulent charges made against it. My now-former bank wanted me to fill out a form — fine — which they would only snail-mail or fax to me.
This form could simply be hosted on their website, as a PDF. In fact, the form I received had something like Z:\BigBankCo_Shared\Docs\Forms\Fraud.docx on the bottom of it, and in the end, I gave them a number of a service that automatically converts faxes into PDFs in emails.
Now, they wanted me to fax (or snail mail) it back. A email with an attachment to a support address, such as fraud-form-returns@bigbank.example.com, would have suffice. Directly, bit for bit equivalent? No. Gets the job done? Yes.
All together, the entire thing was a few simple questions (my info, information about the transactions, and a statement essentially swearing up and down it wasn't my fault) that could also have just been gathered by an HTML form.
(And, I'm not saying these should replace the snail mail/fax; keep them, if there is sufficient demand for them. Which I suspect that once you have an HTML form, there won't be.)
The last time I had to send a fax was when my back account had fraudulent charges made against it. My now-former bank wanted me to fill out a form — fine — which they would only snail-mail or fax to me.
This form could simply be hosted on their website, as a PDF. In fact, the form I received had something like Z:\BigBankCo_Shared\Docs\Forms\Fraud.docx on the bottom of it, and in the end, I gave them a number of a service that automatically converts faxes into PDFs in emails.
Now, they wanted me to fax (or snail mail) it back. A email with an attachment to a support address, such as fraud-form-returns@bigbank.example.com, would have suffice. Directly, bit for bit equivalent? No. Gets the job done? Yes.
All together, the entire thing was a few simple questions (my info, information about the transactions, and a statement essentially swearing up and down it wasn't my fault) that could also have just been gathered by an HTML form.
(And, I'm not saying these should replace the snail mail/fax; keep them, if there is sufficient demand for them. Which I suspect that once you have an HTML form, there won't be.)