What Is TradeTrust
One Framework for Trade Digitalisation
TradeTrust is designed as an enabler to transform your trade digitalisation journey.
TradeTrust is a framework that standardises digital trade with enhanced security and legal certainty for the international trade ecosystem. It allows trading partners to create, exchange, verify digitised documents, and transfer ownership of title documents across different digital platforms seamlessly.
It achieves this by using blockchain and cryptographic technologies, adhering to global standards and legal requirements to enable trusted portability of electronic trade documents across digital platforms. Electronic documents issued this way can be trusted, interoperable, and legally effective across different systems, thereby streamlining and enhancing overall operational efficiency for businesses and governments.
Offered as a digital utility (similar to digital public infrastructure), it is open-source so that all parties can freely adopt and build upon it to benefit their business ecosystem.
Digital Public Goods Registry
In recognition of this commitment to openness and global impact, TradeTrust has been officially listed in the Digital Public Goods Registry by the Digital Public Goods Alliance.
Click here to find out about Digital Public Goods Registry
Click here to find out about Digital Public Goods Alliance.
Click here to view TradeTrust's certification on DPGA’s Digital Public Good (DPG) Registry
It’s like providing you with both a free tool and the supporting structure, to turn your documents into smart electronic documents that are portable across your trading partners, with enhanced security features, all while meeting international standards and legal requirements.
3 Key Functionalities
By adopting TradeTrust, users can independently:
issue and revoke electronic documents (for example, Certificate of Origin, Electronic Transferable Records like Bills of Lading)
verify documents’ proof of source and authenticity
transfer titles for transferable documents
These TradeTrust-enabled electronic documents are functionally equivalent to their paper versions and designed to be UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR) compliant.
How to Get Started
To enjoy all the capabilities of TradeTrust from the convenience of the system you are familiar with, you can just integrate TradeTrust into your existing IT system. Alternatively, outsource or subscribe to the services of TradeTrust-ready partners (Click here to view our partners). This flexibility allows you and your trading partners to choose your preferred TradeTrust-enabled system, eliminating the need for all parties to use a common digital platform and contractual rulebook, thus facilitating easy scalability of adoption.
And to verify documents received, only internet access is required.
Having your documents and instruments available in electronic form can greatly benefit you by improving the speed and security of your transactions, allowing you to reuse data, and automating certain transactions. This makes trading more efficient and convenient for you and your trading partners while reducing the risk of fraud. Click here to discover companies that have experienced TradeTrust.
VIDEO: TradeTrust connects governments and businesses for cross-border trade
Commonly Asked Questions
What are the costs involved?
TradeTrust is free for all to use, and anyone can implement it using the set of pre-built software components.
Your resource is required to understand, learn, and apply this new technological tool into your business use cases. Other costs may include an outsourcing fee for the integration of TradeTrust into your IT system and/or subscription service from TradeTrust-ready .
And depending on your role in the supply chain, transaction costs such as blockchain gas fees may apply. Below are the estimated fees (USD) computed as at 2 February 2023 for a typical series of transactions from the issuance to the surrender of electronic bill of lading (costs distributed among different stakeholders):
Estimated Fees on Ethereum: < US$20 or
Estimated Fees on Polygon: < US$0.16
Estimated Fees on STABILITY: Free and crypto-less, click here to contact STABILITY for service packages
Estimated Fees on XDC: click here to contact XDC
Estimated Fees on ASTRON: Crypto-less, click here to contact ASTRON
Reach out to us to learn more about the costs and how you can save on manual processing and courier costs by going digital.
Are my data and transactions safe?
Your data resides in the electronic document files generated and is not written into the public blockchain to preserve data confidentiality. Only the title ownership is tracked through the use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on one of the selected blockchains for title documents.
And the security and reliability of TradeTrust is ensured through the vulnerability assessment and penetration testing of the Smart Contract Code conducted by a third-party specialist, Ernst & Young.
Why are public blockchains used?
TradeTrust utilises public blockchains or Distributed Ledger Technology to demonstrate provenance that is essential for the legitimacy of documents such as Bills of Lading.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are used to ensure the singularity of the record for transferable documents, with the blockchain recording the NFT transactions to electronically endorse and transfer the ownership of a document among stakeholders along a trade flow.
This choice was deliberate to eliminate the need for a central authority or body to govern the network and gatekeep participation, allowing for an open and interoperable system for all international parties to participate seamlessly.
Legality Guides
Are TradeTrust documents legal?
Your TradeTrust-enabled electronic documents can be supported by statutory law in compliant jurisdictions. Find out how you can rely on TradeTrust documents for international trade.