A postage dispensing system for dispensing evidence of postage payment via a network to a remote processing device, the system comprising: a system level bus; a plurality of servers (20a, 20b, 20c) coupled to the system level bus, each of the servers acting as an initiator on the system level bus, the servers accessible by remote processing devices via the network; an interface device coupled to the system level bus; and a chassis holding a plurality of postal security devices (72a, 72b, 72c, 72d), the chassis coupled to the interface device, wherein each of the plurality of postal security devices can be accessed by each of the plurality of servers via the interface device and system level bus, wherein the system is configured to operate such that: when a first one of the plurality of servers receives a request for a postage indicium via the network from a user using a remote processing device, the first one of the plurality of servers verifies the user, retrieves user account information for the user, selects one of the plurality of postal security devices to generate an indicium, and provides the user account information to the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices via the interface device for initializing the selected one of the postal security devices with the user account information, and the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices generates indicium data and returns the generated indicium data to the first one of the plurality of servers for processing and sending to the remote processing device via the network, if the first one of the plurality of servers fails during processing of the request for the postage indicium, a second one of the plurality of servers is utilized as a backup server to access the selected one of the postal security devices via the interface device and system level bus without having to move the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices or transfer the user account information from the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices to a different postal security device. a system level bus; a plurality of servers (20a, 20b, 20c) coupled to the system level bus, each of the servers acting as an initiator on the system level bus, the servers accessible by remote processing devices via the network; an interface device coupled to the system level bus; and a chassis holding a plurality of postal security devices (72a, 72b, 72c, 72d), the chassis coupled to the interface device, wherein each of the plurality of postal security devices can be accessed by each of the plurality of servers via the interface device and system level bus, when a first one of the plurality of servers receives a request for a postage indicium via the network from a user using a remote processing device, the first one of the plurality of servers verifies the user, retrieves user account information for the user, selects one of the plurality of postal security devices to generate an indicium, and provides the user account information to the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices via the interface device for initializing the selected one of the postal security devices with the user account information, and the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices generates indicium data and returns the generated indicium data to the first one of the plurality of servers for processing and sending to the remote processing device via the network, if the first one of the plurality of servers fails during processing of the request for the postage indicium, a second one of the plurality of servers is utilized as a backup server to access the selected one of the postal security devices via the interface device and system level bus without having to move the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices or transfer the user account information from the selected one of the plurality of postal security devices to a different postal security device.