A method for ensuring for each postage transaction in a postage meter having a vault subsystem (3) and a printing subsystem (5) that debiting occurs prior to printing of a postal indicia includes authenticating the postage transaction as being valid, performing debiting within the vault subsystem (3), sending an encrypted debit certificate from the vault subsystem (3) to the printing subsystem (5), independently recreating the encrypted debit certificate in the printing subsystem (5), comparing the encrypted debit certificate with the recreated encrypted debit certificate to ascertain if a predetermined relationship exists therebetween, and initiating printing of the postal indicia only upon determination of the existence of the predetermined relationship. An apparatus incorporates the method.