They serve to impose the correspondence imposed by the recommended service that obliges the postal administration to compensate the sender of a fixed fee in case of loss of the shipment.
The first state to issue stamps by registered letter was the Kingdom of Spain in January 1, 1850, when it printed a series of five values, three of which with the specific word "certificate".
In 1856, New South Wales issued a blue and red value with the word "Registered" to mean "recommended".
It was then the turn of Colombia that from 1879 issued the value with the words "Certificada" adjoining the effigy of Simón Bolívar and until 1925 continued to issue stamps for recommendation reaching the record of 39 different cartoons.